Zoe Versus, In Verse: A Sestina on Sleep

For this week's installment, I wrote a sestina. 

I'm not one for poetry, as will shortly become clear. If I ever win any poetry awards, it'll be for writing bad poetry, at which I excel. But as Nietzsche was fond of saying, Play to your strengths, ubermensch. Or something similarly exhortatory and German. 

When you stare into a sestina,
the sestina stares back at you.

Here's Webster's definition of a sestina: "a lyrical fixed form consisting of six 6-line unrhymed stanzas in which the end words of the first stanza recur as end words of the following five stanzas in a successively rotating order and as the middle and end words of the three verses of the concluding tercet." Got that? Throughout history, sestinas apparently served as complaints, which of course only encourages me.

For my theme I decided to explore Zoe's rocky relationship with sleep and how this negatively impacts my own relationship to same.

For my six words I chose: (1) tears, (2) sleep, (3) mine, (4) juice, (5) dreams, and (6) demands.

To Sleep or Not to Sleep? (Spoiler: It's the Second One)

She entered the world in an abundance of tears

One of many poets rolling over in
their graves in reaction to my sestina.

In those halcyon days she seemed not averse to sleep

Soon enough she spoke her first word: "mine"

Followed by repeated requests for juice

Never again was I to enjoy uninterrupted dreams

Because 24/7 I was slave to a toddler's demands.

Ever-evolving and capricious were this toddler's demands

At first it was hard to withstand her tears

Time to myself? The stuff of dreams

Dreams I never had because to dream you needed to sleep

She didn't seem to need much herself. Possibly because of all the juice?

Inconvenient truth---the fault was all mine.

What could I do with this sleepless child of mine?

I had to admit a certain inconsistency in response to demands

Sometimes I bribed her with Umizoomi or juice

Sometimes I withheld these until she shed tears

Many an evening I'd count the hours till she'd go to sleep

Would she stay in her bed until morning? In my nonexistent dreams.

Each night that my head hits the pillow, waiting on dreams,

I vow that eight hours rest will finally be mine

She's at her cutest when she finally submits to sleep

Then it's hard to recall the waking person who demands

More TV, more playtime, unnecessary Band-Aids. Soon enough her voice tears

Through the silent apartment: "Mommy! You wake up! You sit with me! Juice!"

Maybe it's good I don't sleep.
This would give me nightmares.

She really really likes juice

I'm convinced that apples are pulped in her dreams

I imagine Granny Smith faces blurred by tears

Lack of zzzz's contributes to this mad fancy of mine

Medication? Is that what the occasion demands?

I down shots of tequila and then collapse into sleep

Five a.m. and I'm woken from sleep

by a tiny voice shouting in my ear, "I want juice!"

I tumble out of bed to face a new string of demands

from a short person who features largely in short dreams.

She leads me to the kitchen, her hand in mine

The overhead light makes my eyes fill with tears

The idea of going back to sleep is the embodiment of my dreams

As she sits on the couch guzzling juice, I can't believe she's all mine.

It's my misfortune that she demands payment in tears.

Zoe: 34; Universe: 0