DAUERNARKOSE

DAUERNARKOSE

DAUERNARKOSE

She has been asleep for three days,
a liquid length of time
 
closed over her head like a sheet
of lake-water. They think they have
 
her dreams cached away
in their clutterbook of explanans,
 
and see no flicker hint from behind
eyelids fern-stitched with blue veins.
 
But she is navigating equations,
pointed fir jungles of isosceles
 
triangles, the screams of chalk
and nails like seagull voice, dust
 
of chalk a scurf on her cuffs.
She walks past the bossy sign-posts
 
of sine and tan, and her map begins
to make sense, when the two-legged
  
travel stool of pi is pulled from under
her and she is splashed awake. She leaves
 
infinity, her last mark, a slender eight
sleeping with its face to the wall.