Sleeping Sickness

Sleeping Sickness

Caught in the lifeless purgatory between Asleep and Awake, I can't decide which way to go.

I need the rest, no doubt, as does any insomniac wrapped up in thoughts of Life and Death; Right and Wrong; Pure and Evil; the thoughts that accompany the quiet hum of the witching hour.

But I'm afraid to sleep because of what haunts me. And I'm afraid to remain awake and aware of the knowledge that, even with my feet planted steadfast on solid ground, I may not be able to recognize myself in a crowd if things don't change.

So I drift for a while in the vacancy which has come to represent my own suffering. This is my own personal self-wrought, self-borne crucifix. I've come to depend on the oppression that is meant to torture, but, through the confused passage of time seems more like the synonym for solidarity, loyalty, leaving emptiness as the only twisted symbol to remind me of my place in existence.

My identity; that which makes me unique from all others, quivers on the edge of what used to be, though I reach for it so intensely the effort causes my skin to split, my skeleton to show through, and my rusty tendons, now craggy and creaking, to seize from over use and lack of attention. I wait until finally, with a sucking, rancid breath, the weight shifts away and I am transformed into a pockmarked pillar of salt.

I have become nothing more than The Huntsman's Almost Kill; not alive but not fully dead. Laying here immobile as I am, I have come to realize that there are pieces of me missing, and what I've felt twinging on my surface is nothing more than the animalistic urges of phantom limbs still demanding their lusty desires be fulfilled. I have no choice but to obey.

I've lost sight of what is real and what is myth, and while parts of me are walking straight, the rest is turning back, and I find myself trapped in the purgatory between Asleep and Awake,

Trying to decide which way to go.