Sleep Disorder
The edges filling in
like a city that’s sinking,
a city that’s been lost
to its own element
and has found another,
less hospitable but not
out of the question. And when
the doctor shone the spectrum
directly into my eye
I could see
the capillaries forking lightning
about the retina,
shredding up the blood sky.
For days the images
reversing themselves back there
had been puckering away
from the center
like spacetime sinkholing
near a massive planet. Afterwards,
walking through Koreatown,
dodging in the shadows
because all light pained,
up-to-down signs
in a language of keyholes,
places for dumplings and
little bowls of sea-tasting cabbage—
you put it in your mouth
because any wave runs till it breaks.