The Importance of Being Feline

Pretending To Sleep Beside You

Pretending to Sleep Beside You

A look of love.
A theatrical kiss.
You turn out the light, and hold me in the darkness.

I smile my plastic smile.
I yawn my cardboard yawn.
I lay my head upon your chest, and hear your steadied heartbeat beside my naked breast.

A heave of a contented sigh.
A possessive hand that grasps my thigh.
How will I get by till the distant sunrise?

I'm pretending to sleep beside you.

My face rises and falls with each breath you take,
While my own breaths expelled are so painfully fake.
My face bears the eyes that lie.
The eyes that remain open wide stare at diving swallows, disguised as shifting shadows.
While my body lies still, my mind races through meadows.

I'm pretending to sleep beside you.


You shift and turn and my eyes burn.
You wake sleepily, and draw me hungrily.
These lying eyes, I shut them quickly.
You brush a hair lovingly across my furrowed brow, kiss my forehead,
And fall back into a dream, as my eyes jolt open at the explosion of your heart dully pounding my name.

My lying eyes flash open wide.
My thoughts, they travel far and wide.
Too hard to stop these limbs that writhe...

I'm pretending to sleep beside you.

I'm pretending to sleep with open eyes
Pretending not to be living a lie.
Emotions as true as the shifting tide...
A mind alive...
A mind that has died.

Can't go on pretending to love you.