Vague traffic sounds outside the window.
A light snow falling. Waking a little.
Slipping off again. The distinctions

between things blurring not to the point
of being indistinguishable, but softening
the parts of myself normally barred

from each other. More than where
public and private selves merge,
here is where the selves I might

become are cast on those I’ve been.
Here is where one learns to lay claim
to nothing.

I wake, my not-yet-self
projecting back on the life I rise into.