15 Months Later… This is almost a nightmare. The setting is right, it’s 4 something-god-awful AM and you’re in a dark bathroom, trying to escape the ravages of a body gone ape shit, trying to shut all the dark doors it has kicked open, trying to quell the murder of thoughts threatening to blot out the sky. But this isn’t a nightmare because you feel a monkey clawing up your back, you can hear it screaming in your ear, “this is not a dream, but you still better wake up. because this. is. not. a. dream.” Those words hit like thunder and throw out flashbacks that disorient. Flashbacks to nights of no sleep, days of exhaustion, and the blurry gray, guilt inspiring, times of wanting to give up the fight. This is dangerously close to a nightmare. A totem in the form of a pill bottle is what drew you to this spot. Your pain delirious steps brought you here, and your spirit-fueled stubbornness holds you back. Here you are…and there it is – the bottle with the quick answers and backwards directions. The simian in the spine screeches, “you can take just one, just one will be okay. And the coven of crows caw, “You’re in pain. You’re exhausted. Just one is understandable. Just one is an honest break.” Their noise is so convincing, so conniving, that you feel yourself falter for a second, a second where you are too indomitable to fall and only human enough to falter. Faltering on the edge of that cliff overlooking a terrible abyss, where you can see the past tense threatening to swallow the present, a shudder of revulsion causes you to take a step back. ‘Just one’ holds the gun, ‘just one’ is apathy on the trigger, ‘just one’ and the abyss has won. No. …The abyss cannot win. As long as you are feeling, the abyss cannot, it will not, win. With one step back, the memories flow in and the tape plays back. Mute and out of focus, the tape plays back. Feelings of the abyss reach out from every moment. The tape plays back and you step back, again and again. Again, until you find yourself out of the bathroom, into the hallway, and finally back in your bed. Instead of a bottle of pills, you reach for headphones and lose yourself somewhere between the ears and on a river. This is not a nightmare. You made sure of that. 7/23/13 M. L. Michael
15 Months later
This is almost a nightmare.
The setting is right, it’s 4 something-god-awful AM and you’re in a dark bathroom, trying to escape the ravages of a body gone ape shit, trying to shut all the dark doors it has kicked open, trying to quell the murder of thoughts threatening to blot out the sky.[…]
Every Breath Poetic 