Jem Goulding

Jem Goulding is the current Poet in Residence at the Bokship

Pretending to Sleep

It doesn’t matter how shut tight
Your trembling eyelids seem to be,
I know your senses are all right
Because in the dim shadows I can see,
That you are pretending to sleep.

We secret voyeurs insist on this fight
Playing dead on the mattress half-innocently
To spy on each other thus extending the night
And peek through still lashes in sick ecstasy,
For the thrill of pretending to sleep.

Perhaps we’re better as one in this light
Despite the fact it appears that we
Have a strange little game here, and fun oversight
Of the problems that lovers, the he, and the she
Can avoid by pretending to sleep.