sleep arrives as
a sand dune
grown overnight.
 
your wife climbs
alongside, and so too
does every mortal
 
like you. they live
as colourblind words
in hand though you leave
 
them courtside, as
conscience is a burden
already too dense
 
to play with. It lasts
the duration of an eyeblink
(one full eighth of a second)
 
which was also the time
taken for a teardrop
to collapse in your kneel
 
four summers back.
years from now they will
explain on your behalf 
 
the impossibility of
moving deserts through
a fissure in the Great Wall,
 
but the plane is bound for K.L.
and you are left an inbetween ocean
that has shrunk to almost nothing.