SleepNoMore.

All is darkness around me. I am becoming nothingness dissolving into the ether. I wind my way through blackened false night, wary of my feet no longer part of me, no more than flesh and bone and no less. I hear the beating in the distance, it rumbles in me. The red tinged womb. Cushioned ceiling, velvet wall tablecurtain chair. It smells of booze and smoke and excitement. Calming and distressing. the red club the black 6 should be. myself drifting. a card clutched in a chilled hand. I watch. I wait. poised at the edge of touching. dallying. waiting. until i am called to lose who i am. I turn my hat around, one veil discarded for another, emboldened.

I will not follow, I will not lead, I will only allow myself existance. holding still in time feetplanted in now. I taste with my hands, touch with my eyes, smell with my memory. I can feel the collision, the not right. new filled with old. old reading new, playing together on the floor behind the mirror death. fading in the light. i dance to the slow steadiness. i gobble up the world. The children are gone, beds empty, unmade, they swirl through the air. teddy forgotten by the phone, i comfort him to hold onto the string of reality fraying.

Inside i am outside, trapped in the insideout life. walls crumbling are being built. she hides her face from the light but stone does not see. she faces from death. tatters of memories, sage bundled for the burning, symbolic and meaningless, i tear myself from rubble. rip the shreds, readthe sodden words, open the cupboard to find it bare. and lacking, i want to crawl inside. not this time.

I find the tailor, the apothecary, the stuffed birds and beasts howling and cawing in silence. the boxes stink of dirt wet. i have become nothing. the couple, drunk on their desire, blinded by lust, they do not see me. they crumble crumple and i watch them dissolvedespair. but i am lost and do not understand. My mind is gone, repeating in spiral, tight circles, i float, I find myselfwanting. A lock of hair gone, checked in, tuckedinto bed. my doctor more mad than I. A woman in white, a goat a wood. Peaceful. still. order in the branches. my nurse who i drifted here to see wanders off. I do not follow. she does not mind. I watch the doctor become the patient. how to write when there is no more chalk. dust. float. redwomb destroyed. i look with my fingers and they comeaway red. stuckysweet. nomore soft, nomoresafe.

Below I must find a way out, before my dust drifts too far apart. The air is cooler below, the light full and bright. a bed fit for a king. a drink a dance. I am driven by a force not quite internal a pulsating reality that I can't graps and can't avoid. i have no skin, nobones. I am the essence of nothing. I feel the betrayal, i smell the angerfearhate. lust. loathing. it excites me. Shudder.

out of time, grounding gone, realitybalks. I am history. Bellhop too drunk to notice me, his mistress to real. I test the rotary dials to know they are. to feel like something is. I feel the ether shudder, I am not alone. white clouds of smoke we become. together. dust drawing from all the corners. pulled. together sad, together frightened, becomingoneself.

We follow the men. We hear the music. all is well until something is minorchord. flying featherstuck. deadweight falling. we sit, we wait for the light to guide the sound. wait for those that follow the woman. building aching for understanding wholeness, pursestrings tight. knifethickdust takesshape. it is noone and everyone. all of us together are still nobody. we wait for the ones we follow. whobringshape and give wholeness. they eat with their hands accuse with their mouths until the last can nolonger abide. until the last flingshimself into the ether, whitesmokebelow. until hebecomes nothing to free us all and separate one from the other.

We find ourselves again after.we become. And I turn my hat around but can not truly hide as before. I have seen the becoming and it is futurenow.