While I Was Sleeping

While I was sleeping last night,

seven billion homeless wanderers

came to my door (I know you

were one of them) wanting a mug

of yesterday's coffee and some

toll house cookies my grandmother

taught me how to bake.

This is why I keep my heart ajar

all through the night, a sliver of me

unlocked to hear the shuffling socks

of humanity come down the hallway

of my breathing (I know you took off

your shoes when you came in) to rest

a little while in my kitchen by the candle's

flickering pool of loneliness

where at last we all gather again,

vacantly staring through wider rings

of embryonic darkness, not yet

shaped by uncertainty into ourselves.

I need not say to you who wander

uninvited here, "Welcome, rest, eat.”

One night may I find such leftovers

warmed up and ready for me

in the small but generous kitchen

of your own broken heart

(have you baked them yet?),

because I know our sleeplessness

out-spirals the stars, wending

the circumference of a hug

( I in you, you in me) to arrive 

beyond darkness, where death 

comes home to breathe.
 
 
Illustration from Grandfather Twilight, Barbara Berger

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