My apnea upends my wife’s dreams.

Loud, German guttural sounds of snoring

abruptly halt and she wakes to wait.

Her breathing deepens with her anxiety.

My dreams continue, although I know not.

Maybe I am at the lake with the kids

pretending to be a sturgeon weaving

low and without a wake.

Maybe I am driving through Gary Indiana

while it sleeps under absent stars.

Maybe I am in New Delhi walking with a slum-dog

to his bedroom in the wastelands.

Maybe I am back with my drug delusional father

dying of emphysema and I didn’t walk out.

Maybe God took my breath away to take me

to secret places beyond this nightly death.

My airways open again and deep draughts

stretch the two life-giving sacks.

My wife is once again lulled to sleep

by my edgy bilingual breathing.

© Gerald Allen Barrett and parentheticallyspeakingin3d, 2012.