Salvatore Difalco

I fly in my sleep.
I fly all night.
It feels like I’ve flown all night
when I rise from bed at dawn
and ready my breakfast of tea and bread.

Sometimes I feel like
I have died in my sleep
and the light fluttering through the blinds
is a memory of that previous life.
Indeed, my splitting headache tells me I’m alive.

A hammer split it in a dream,
my head. But upon waking
no blood splotched my blanket;
my touched head felt dry as straw.
I iced the skull until it felt nothing.

Sometimes I feel
like I’m still dreaming
though not flying.
I don’t fly in all of my dreams.
No one flies in all of them.

I walk around with a smile
but my smile means nothing more than 
I find it all a little unreal, the world, 
if not absurd: I hail a yellow taxi
driven by a tonsured guy called Andy.

Tell me something, Andy,
what does it all mean?
Sadly, Andy wears headphones and hears
nothing I say, and makes no effort to fake it.
Take me to Hell, I say. But he hears nothing.

Is this half-waking
like living in Hell or Heaven?
I imagine Heaven doesn’t welcome
disheveled insomniacs or lunatics who stare
too long at the moon.

Salvatore Difalco

Salvatore Difalco is a Sicilian Canadian poet currently residing in Toronto.