4:29 AM An Account of What No Sleep Will Do in the Middle of the Night

I always find my head swimming with unwelcome depressive thoughts. Like little fishes, they hide amidst anemone until they think I’m gone, having drifted away into the ocean of sleep.

But here they are, more punctual than a newly tuned clock. They crawl back, shadows in a world that has had the lights turned out again. The light does keep them away for a while, yes, but never are they truly gone. Fear is an ever-present entity, and with anxiety and panic, it forms the holy trinity.

I’ve never known why they come. I haven't  got the answers, nor have I figured out how to get them to leave. When did I give permission to enter my house? When did my mind lower its guard just enough to let them pass, and what did the rest of my body do to stop them? Nothing, I’m afraid. They don’t have the answers either. If this is a class or a test, I’m surely failing.

How is everything so loud when silence is all around me? Where does the noise come from if nothing is making the sound? How am I to cover to my ears when the scream comes from beneath them, beneath bone and skull and brain? Oddest yet, I have no idea what the screams are saying. It is just noise.

Sleep—why are you running away from? Why do you play this game of tag with me? I don’t want to play, but I still find I’m “it” every time. Please let me forfeit. Please let me rest.

Unrest has been planting seeds in my head. I am left to weed while I should be sleeping. Just like farmers get up at 5 AM to plow the fields, I too am up at dawn, reaping what unrest has sown, only I don’t want what’s produced. Rotten thoughts and poisonous roots will kill anything that’s still holding on.

I feel at this very moment, that if someone were to press me into a ball and compress me, harder and harder, I could turn into a diamond. My heart and head have gotten a head start—they feel like rocks inside me. Maybe if my body turned into a diamond, I would be worth something.

It’s been hard to keep the faith that there isn’t something wrong with me. Normally, your head and heart work against each other in matters of life, but they have teamed up on me and now they say the same things. They both whisper about me and have inside jokes. My heart tells my head what I have given up and my head laughs that I was so stupid to give pieces of myself away. They both think I’m stupid, that I am hopeless. I doubt my kidneys or spleen will suddenly back me up in this war. All my other senses fail me too, and I am left unprotected, standing in the middle of the battlefield—armor-less and exposed.

You are not truly alone until your body has abandoned you.

Scents

I took a shower to get off the scent of you.
Did you know that you have a scent?

It smells like blushed cheeks and the hands that I buried my face in every time there was an awkward silence.

It smells like the cold air and falling snow as you pressed me up against my car.

It smells like you calling me baby, darling, or honey.

It smells like the first time we had sex, and I told you that you smelled like ginger.

It smells like talking to you for hours about the most random things and the connection I thought was there.

It smells like knowing you were avoiding me before you even told me, knowing there was something wrong even though you said there wasn't.

It smells like opening my phone to message you and seeing that you had deleted me on all accounts.

I used to go to bed with these smells on me.
Now, I scrub them off so I can forget.

my skin feels like satin,

my fingers like butterflies slipping across my lips

everything is fuzzy

hazy with light and life

my mouth is a cushion

my eyes are heavy with sleep

i want to be a part of everything

and never miss out

on a second of the life I have before me

what a beautiful day

what a beautiful life

Wounds

I pick at my problems
as if they were sores on my skin.
They hurt just as much,
but they're not as easy to remove.
They crawl around and burrow
where they can never be reached,
never to be brought to the light.
Always hidden, always festering and itching.
Always scratching at the problem I can't see.
Blindly searching for a remedy to an illness
I'm not aware of.
How do you fix the issue
when it becomes a part of you?

What is this?

i wouldn't call this depression

but i also wouldn't call this happiness

Signs

You know you're in love
when you'd trade your sanity
for just one more minute in their company.
When you'd jump off a building,
arms spread wide like featherless wings,
with just a glimpse of a hope that they'll
be there to catch you.
When you can count the hours on the clock
by how many times their name echos in your head.
It's a good thing I know what love looks like
so I can keep an eye out for it when it finally finds me.

senses of  an all-nighter

ever been so awake that even your bones seem to buzz?
Like you're a key tied to a kite, electricity coarsing through your veins
so alert that everything seems to be slow around you except
for your fingers, gliding across the keyboard as if they were
dancing some elaborate routine