Ceilings

just as the night sky shifts
beyond the minds

of the animals outside

the ceilings
we are pressed beneath change

in aspect & colour

each evening they drop
a little closer

in rooms that carry us
from one year

to the next

we float below water stains
& cracks

lit like reels of stars

my faith
in a better reality frayed

to a single thread

as I scan the cobwebbed beams
in silence

& wait for a sign
that refuses to drop

lidocaine-bright
or yellowed from bowers of smoke

some nights only darkness seems
to keep the roof up

& each evening
the quietness wraps

a little tighter
as we sink into the sheets

eyes dazed shut

our prayers like hands
crawling

over the drips of faux-plaster

how our shirts slip from one colour
to the next

& time is always in deficit

catching up or catching on
to something half-gone

Daniel Sluman is a 39-year-old poet and disability rights activist. He co-edited the first major UK Disability poetry anthology Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back, and he has published three poetry collections with Nine Arches Press. His most recent collection, single window was released in September 2021, and was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize.