She will sing you to sleep with long
sentences, endless, excessive, as you watch her
gaze, a comma or two, irrelevant and irregular,
blending into the Times New Roman of her tone,
till you feel your eyes grow weary, waiting for
the steady breathing out, the completion of a rhyme.
She sings you to sleep.

When you wake there are harsh syllables to grab
at you, yell, threaten! Lots of consonants, biting down,
just to prove their point – No Night! – No End! Her
pitch is high, her tongue sharp, and she! Breathes! Not!
Full stops and exclamation dribbling down her chin
yet her inhale-exhale: shallow. Woken by
words.

She will sing you to sleep again with her long sentences
when she’s older and tired and her words are just
unsure components of an alphabet which her brain is watching
walk away; she smiles softly and, though there are tears,
there is still the sweetness of sibilance
the quiet of her voice
till you’ve both been sung to sleep. .

Zofia Zunyth is an aspiring poet and writer, currently residing in the UK. She likes to imagine, and write about, the life of strangers in the street, and hopes that they too can imagine themselves within her work.