Touch" You are already asleep. I lower myself in next to you, my skin slightly numb with the restraint of habits, the patina of self, the black frost of outsideness, so that even unclothed it is a resilient chilly hardness, a superficially malleable, dead rubbery texture. You are a mound of bedclothes, where the cat in sleep braces its paws against your calf through the blankets, and kneads each paw in turn. Meanwhile and slowly I feel a is it my own warmth surfacing or the ferment of your whole body that in darkness beneath the cover is stealing bit by bit to break down that chill. You turn and hold me tightly, do you know who I am or am I your mother or the nearest human being to hold on to in a dreamed pogrom. What I, now loosened, sink into is an old big place, it is there already, for you are already there, and the cat got there before you, yet it is hard to locate. What is more, the place is not found but seeps from our touch in continuous creation, dark enclosing cocoon round ourselves alone, dark wide realm where we walk with everyone.

— Thom Gunn

#sleeping #dreams