At six the alarm ascends into a scream,
a banshee with a grudge against my dream.
I, who last night resolved to rise like light
lie pinned beneath the wreckage of the night.
One eye consents to open. Just the one.
It scans the ceiling, rules the morning.
So out my hand goes, practised, unafraid,
and finds the snooze: that patron saint of shade.
“Five minutes,” I propose. “A modest sum.
A tiny overdraft. It’s barely done.”
I sign the deal the way the drowsy do
no counsel, no fine print, no thought seen through.
The dark is warm. The duvet is a vow.
The pillow murmurs, “Stay. There’s time. Allow.”
I sink, believing five will come and go
like tidy interest measured, sweet, and slow.
But Time! That auditor with flinty stare
does not accept the terms I’ve floated there.
I wake, convinced I’ve dozed a wink, no more
then read the clock. Six forty-five. I roar.
Where fled the forty minutes? Embezzled! Fled!
Some thief in fleece has robbed me of my bed
no, robbed me of my rising, which is worse.
The snooze, it seems, comes bundled with a curse.
The five I borrowed bred, and bred again,
compounding into forty. Such is sin.
I lurch up, late and lied-to, fully grieved,
audited by a clock, and not reprieved.
You’d think a woman burned would learn to budget,
would eye the bed with sense, and boldly judge it —
flag it high-risk, a known repeat offender.
But no. Come afternoon, I re-surrender.
“Just twenty minutes,” coos the post-lunch me,
“a small siesta, merely horizontal tea.”
I set no alarm (the fool!), and lay me down
upon the softest liability in town.
The pillow, sensing prey, begins its work.
This is no stuffing. Something in it lurks
a gravity distilled from cloud and sand,
designed to keep a head in dreamland’s hand.
I try to lift my head. Reader, it won’t.
My neck sends up a stiffly worded note.
The pillow holds me fast; we both can see
the head’s collateral now, and stays with me.
I bargain. I invoke my list of chores.
The pillow counters softly: “Just some more.”
Its argument is warm, and deep, and true.
I default as all defaulters tend to do.
And when I surface, blinking, drooled and dazed,
the afternoon has aged; the light has changed
turned all its argument from white to gold.
My twenty minutes? Ninety, I am told.
So here’s my seasoned, expert-witness view,
stamped, filed, and signed. I offer it to you:
the bed’s the one bad asset I can’t sell,
the snooze the one soft trap I love too well.
Set every alarm. Deploy them in a row.
The pillow will still win. It always does. And so
I wave the white flag, sink, and cease to strive;
some mornings simply begin at six forty-five.
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