I love sleep.

From daydreams to nightmares, I could live in my dreams forever.

No matter how vivid those other worlds appear to be,

Nor how terrifying the chases are,

No matter how much the fear tickles my bones,

I still love sleep because it is never quiet.

With my eyes closed, I can see the whole world light up and it makes me smile.

The nightmares would be a bother for some,

But for me they provide excitement, adrenaline,

And, well, writing material.

And my dreams are extravagant, never lucid but vivid with

The images of cloud cities and moms,

Not just pictures but experiences and then I wake up and-

I love sleep.

But I hate falling.

Falling into sleep, out of sleep... it all sucks.

In the dark, before I’m shipped off to another world,

I stare down a vast cavern, something full and empty all at once.

It is my mind.

I can hear vultures shrieking inside and I cringe at their screams,

Wishing I could hide myself from flesh encrusted claws.

This is the pit I must fall into before I can find my way out.

I avoid this pit like the enemy’s ship in shark infested water.

It is how to survive. It is also one way to die.

When I lay down in bed, wrapped in cotton and warmth, the Quiet chit chats, it talks back, sharp edges looming towards me.

Thoughts scuttle across the ground, poisonous tendrils waiting for me to succumb to an infinite low,

Memories suckle on flesh walls, their slime permanently etched in yet dripping deeper into dark recesses.

Manic emotions are glued to the ceiling, dim lights flashing on and off with my bipolar, refusing to slice into the blue and black below.

The temptations of dreams lead me to tiptoe to the tip, an edge so sharp that I slice my foot on the very idea of leaping.

But I can’t stay in this cavern forever.

I tip, falling slow like molasses in the streets, drowning the dead in my wake.

It is this slow feeling that gives those monsters an advantage.

I can feel their humid hot breath on my skin, feel licks of brick tongue scalding my back, hear the panting and groaning of pain, a desperate pain, I fear looking up-

But looking down is just as bad because that deepest blue is so impossibly endless, it makes me feel like giving up

So instead I close my eyes, squeezing myself into a ball to hide within my own mind, the flesh walls rushing past me, the monsters rushing towards me, I’m rushing towards the ground-

I love sleep.

But I hate falling.

When the rays of morning leak through my dreamcatchers, I can’t decide which is worse:

Falling in, or out.

The best part about falling out of sleep is how quick it is. That’s also the worst part.

In my dreams, or nightmares, I am a bored god.

I could control the universe, but it’s much more fun to live amongst my creations.

Yet all gods must return to their own world at some point.

It’s almost nauseating because as I fall into the light, my spirit thumps between dream and awake, a rapid whiplash that leaves my hair and face windswept and smudged.

A coil tugs on my brain, pulling a noose tight and I hold on because this is the world I want to be in

But yanking bedsheets suffocate me: I know what it feels like, I do it every day,

Now the day is catching up,

My time is running out

The noose is pulling tighter,

I am forced to hide inside a trashcan to win my nightmare,

I must give my last kisses to a mother I will wait seventy years for, change my afterlife for,

I need to wrap up this last job because I won’t ever return, that’s not how my dreams work,

I only have so much time before the sun will drag me from my bed

I don’t want to leave, please, I beg.

Please.

 

 

Image: "Sleep Paralysis" by Unknown