Early Morning

I lay beside you

Awake before the sun, as usual

My energy comes in darkness, after twilight, before dawn

The sun, everyone else’s power ball

Makes me want to curl under a rock

Cool dirt lizard avoiding my enemy

We’re in our fifth place in less than a year

In my dreams, I’m always somewhere different

Complicated labyrinths

A group house in the apocalypse

A family home, just not mine

I wake up wary, not sure where I am, never sure it’s safe

But then, the dawning

Your soft breathing snore beside me

Not the thunder that drives wives into another room

Just a measured sound of your breathing, with little snorts tossed in

And your odd habit of sleep laughing

Just a chortle here, a giggle there, for reasons lost forever to your dreams

And beloved massive expanda cat

Happily asleep across my stomach

His corpulence has spawned an endless list of funny nicknames

That really betray our love and fear for him

Twenty five-ish pounds of love in my lap, safe, and warm

Talking in his sleep, as some happy cats do

While his lithe sinuous reincarnated courtesan sister

flirts to wake my sleeping husband as dawn breaks

My family is a man laughing in his sleep beside me

A baby behemoth mountains of black and white fur