Gravity Works

what is this success, glowing friendly
in my palm like a lightning bug?
what is it now that must come gently to me?
what peace is left to sidle from right shoulder
to left, closing the lid of each eye?

[© 2010 Sophia Nelson]

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]

And Then

In my mind there is this place where everyone I know is dead.
And I’m alone.
And nobody is asking me questions. Nobody wants anything from me.

But I’m also sad. I’m more than sad. I’m desperate. I’m crazy. I’m so unbelievably heartsick I feel like vomiting.
Because I can’t stand to be without him. Because the thought of his death rips my soul apart.

I imagine what it would be like, what I would be like in his absence. I picture myself laying down in the grass and never getting up. Never feeling anything again except for sunlight and rain and wind, cut loose from all the things that make me human.

I picture myself sliced up, bloodied lines up and down my body, like I used to be, except this time I don’t feel any guilt. I just hurt, and I don’t want to stop and there’s no one left in the world to stop me.

I picture myself sick. So sick I’m writhing on the ground, like my soul is trying to escape my body, because she can’t bear to be in a place where he doesn’t exist. Because she has to find him and if she doesn’t she’ll die, trapped inside my body.

But there’s also this little flicker of peace, like a lightning bug. It just floats there in the dark, occasionally reminding me its there by the soft, small light it carries. And I realize, if he were dead I’d have nothing else to live for.

And then I’d be free.

[© 2010 Sophia Nelson]