Gravity Works

Nightmares

It’s taking me twenty days a week to find the things I keep losing. The memory loss is the worst part, trickling down like heavy metals in the body leaving the mind. Like I woke up one day and forgot Latin. Like all the copper in my brain just vanished. The enlightened bits of poetry I find in the day fail to emerge due to the lack of sleep, but it’s my attitude towards what lurks in the dark that determines why all the metals in my soul are disappearing, why I’m not magnetic anymore.

There’s always a dog barking somewhere, trying to warn me that all the groaning in the walls is not my imagination. I hear it all night long. There’s something creeping in the vents.

I wake up every night between 3:30am and 4:15. No matter how much energy I’ve wasted during the day. No matter how much I’ve swallowed. I’m beginning to think that even if I bled myself dry, and lay cold and dead on the floor all day I would wake up at 4:00 am.

[© 2010 Sophia Nelson]