Poem: Night Time Makes Me Weary

24/07/21

Night Time Makes Me Weary

2 a.m. tears into the night, drifting through the abyss.

I wondered what she could be, that person who I was. When I was she and not they.

When daydreams and daymares end in jolts of slamming into your body again, who is the body when the mind leaves?

Though he tried to listen, saying I am here the likelihood he could be was filtered through false technology and sleepy haze. He tries but sometimes he can't reach them. He doesn't want to save them, only to hold them for one second longer. Maybe the body and mind can find a place to stay together instead of separating once more.

In each instance of unreliability forced by technology or schedule, he feels them recede further into a shell building a glass wall where he can feel them screaming.

They feel they need to push him away like everyone else to stay stable in their earthquake-ridden mind. When you are used to buildings built on sand, concrete feels false and unsettling seasickness. It makes you queasy until your brain realises you are still holding onto a piece of driftwood on solid ground.

Seventeen on the Richter scale never felt so safe as when it was chosen by them over possible rejections. The silence stabilizes as much as it unsettles.

In the past, to dance or sing in joy became twisted, suddenly about pain from family and friends. That moment the wings broke off at their shoulders, limp against their back while their feet became encased in lead and their voice became an eternal whisper. They check their phone another hundred times in an hour waiting for the response to their panicked reach out for help.

He didn't respond that night. Each time they check, they die a little more as the perceived promise is broken with each unlock of their phone, driving home that they feel alone.

The next morning, he asks if they are okay and they shrug it off. I'm fine, are you okay?

So the conversation continues, one deflection after another and he loses his will to push any further. He was so close to getting them to tell the truth again and for them to say that they needed help, he could have helped them. Really he was no better at this than them.

He covered his trauma with jokes while they coated theirs with sugary smiles and motherly concern for others.

They go looking for themself in others, picking up pieces of personalities and seeing if they stick to the gaps in their facade. Their collage slowly grows in colour until they can't tell where the pieces of others end and they begin.

Once again, they cover up; naked without these pieces crashing the darkness into shatters, exhausted again from fighting the daylight's scrutinising eyes.

That was why the nighttime was safer. At least they had a reason to be vigilant when they can't see and the other people around wouldn't be able to see them question the smile's faltering.

They swallow another pill, maybe this will help them sleep again;

Half the time it worked, the other half it made things worse.

Another hallucination for them or maybe fitful sleep, perhaps a different script might help.

They could talk to their doctor in the morning, maybe these nights would end sooner so they can move on.

They curl up under layers of blankets in a nest of pillows and grab onto their teddy bear.

At least a stuffed animal won't do anything bad to them.

They feel like a child, sleeping with the lights on or blankets covering their head.

Toes tucked up under the blankets just in case the monsters try to grab them.

They had tried to be a grown-up when they felt the same as they were at six years old, hiding under their bed away from the yelling and clattering of plates to the tiles in the kitchen.

Changes only came to the body, leaving them more vulnerable to being used.

The paralysis sets in again.

The ceiling and bear their only comfort.

This is the same every night they could remember.