Elizabeth Wilson: 2022 National Poetry Month Part 2

Meet the Poet:

Elizabeth Wilson is an aspiring tap dancer, chronic illness advocate, and Rising Voices of Narcolepsy speaker, living with type 1 narcolepsy in the North Carolina mountains with her partner and son.

She won the 2021 Patricia Dobler Poetry Award, and her first book, Windowpanes, forthcoming from Headmistress Press, won the 2021 Sappho’s Prize in Poetry. You can find more of Elizabeth’s poems in Clementine Unbound, ONE ART: A Journal of Poetry, Trouvaille Review, and Eunoia Review.

About the Poem:

“This poem has its origins in high school, when I was under a great deal of pressure and my sleep paralysis, accompanied by hypnopompic and hypnagogic hallucinations, was happening with greater frequency and intensity. I thought that I was being plagued by demons.” – Elizabeth Wilson

Night Fall    

I’m electric. A current
ripples from my crown

to my toes. The ossicles
in my ears hum and whir.

I’m restrained by a witch
stronger than gravity.

Purple dust swirls, settles
on my chest, chokes

my breath. This is a dream,
I tell myself, a nightmare

for the waking. If I can just
move my pinky finger,

I’ll break her spell. I’ll wake up.
Night will fall around me.

Thank you, Elizabeth, for sharing your poetry.  Connect with Elizabeth on Instagram via @zebrafeats. Stay tuned – more poems from this incredibly creative community coming soon!