Resting (Not Sleeping) from Edie Reaney Chunn’s Postal Work or, Day After Day | Vallum Chapbook Award 2025, 2nd Place

Resting (not sleeping)

Tried : tired : trying —

The loop of the day
ends and for all of it
the undeliverable unreadable
was a stone in my shoe slivering my heel,
a rock
on the path of
the silver moon,
nagging
snickling
sickening
stone —
dust in the eye —

When resting, nothing worse
than the circumference of a thought
caught on a crestless tide : circling a point
everstill, not to be caught
til day.

I want to set it all down, this walking, this work, this pocket of letters icn’atraed :
put them down
and rest, set them
down — not as words
on paper, but as
the heavy weight
no one speaks of.