Insomnia

I try tearing paper into tiny, perfect squares— they cut my fingers.  Warm milk, perhaps, stirred counter-clockwise in a cast iron pan— but even then there’s burning at the edges, angry foam-hiss.  I’ve been told to put trumpet flowers under my pillow, I do: stamen up, the old crone said. But the pollen stains, and there are bees, I swear, in those long yellow chambers, echoing, the way the house does, mocking, with its longevity— each rib creaking and bending where I’m likely to break— I try floating out along the long O of lone, to where it flattens to loss, and just stay there disconnecting the dots of my night sky as one would take apart a house made of sticks, carefully, last addition to first, like sheep leaping backward into their pens.