Anais Vionet Poet Free verse

Notes About The Poem

larks

larks begin their social day
before dawn, in the early morning darkness.
They’re wired for it
So am I.

I’m a short-sleeper - it’s genetic
I’m talking about my DEC2, ADRB1, mGluR1 and NPSR1 genes. If I average 4 or 5 hours of sleep, for weeks and weeks, I’m good to go.

This works well for school, but back in the COVID lockdown days - it was crazy. I’d be up at all hours - long after the reasonable world closed its eyes. I’d walk the halls, seemingly everywhere, like Shakespeare’s eleven ghosts.

That’s a poetic queue if I ever heard one..

She shuns her weary bed
in the darkened hush of midnight
when slumber should rule

Her pale brow needs no rest,
so she wraith-like roams her parent’s home. 
Fey and fleet, her footsteps falling soft 
in shadows thick as underworld

She’s the grinning ghost
in the game room - a sleepless phantasm 
moving to dance-dance-revolution’s beat
in seeming revelry wild.

She’s the gliding spirit in the endless, well-lit pool, 
slicing effortlessly through the glass-slick turquoise
a selkie-sleek mermaid in a loop of back and forth 
who makes pitch-night, an otter's roam.

To the kitchen then, this lissome spectre paces,
restlessness and moonlight walks compel cravings
she’s not seeking the company of other restless souls
- she’s searching for yummy Totino's Pizza Rolls.
.
.
Songs for this:
Time and Love by Laura Nyro
Late Night Talking by Harry Styles

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Vincine Fallica March 21, 2026 at 5:42 PM You bring me back. I can still hear the acoustic echoes of children’s splashes and squeals in the college’s pool while I did laps at the far end. / There must be a rule about turquoise blue pools. Glass or not I want to see a red one, or purple! / What’s the gene for Totino's Pizza Rolls deficiency? / Nicely done. <3 Chris Conn March 21, 2026 at 6:42 PM What? You’ve never been bitten by a shark? Not even on the inside upper thigh? =] Anais Vionet March 21, 2026 at 6:35 PM It turns out that we all sufferd from Totino's Pizza Rolls deficiency during the lockdown - that's why the supreme triple meat rolls were such a find. I love swimming pools. I can sit by the ocean all day but I SWIM in the hotel pool. You know, no one in Heraclee France pool has ever gotten shark-bit?