Sleep: Night Two

By M.G.J.

Another night that I lay in bed staring up into a void, the glitter from the asbestoses filled ceiling sparkles like stars, reflecting light cast by the moon’s rays as they impale the blinds like a thousand small blades cutting into the skin, a surgeons tool, or the medium of psychopath. They paint a picture that tells a story, a space odyssey that takes me into the open space that I call my mind. It speaks of times when all was well. When we didn’t have to worry about not having enough for the rent, or whether we’d have food on the table. But with this dying economy, and past mistakes, how can I think of times now past? I see you lying beside me, remember our love, that night down by the railroad tracks, we were so in love then. They say all you need is love. How can you rest so peacefully? Can you not hear the sounds carried in the wind?

Can you not hear the wind rumbling in the distance, howling like two rabid wolves competing for the last bit of meat left on a rotting carcass? Can you not hear the screeching tires, the burning rubber, the hot lead that cuts through the air? Do you not wish to leave this wretched place? I hear the sirens in the distance, miles away yet they feel so close, they remind me like all else of the world that surrounds my tiny apartment, in this…Sinners Paradise. And once again like every night that damn clock. Tick TOCK Tick TOCK, beating like the pulse of a broken heart, dying for just one last ounce of a partners love. If only to reach into the chest and silence this life, could I have one nights rest? I begin to wonder why I have the clock in the first place. Ah yes, because its sound soothes you, helps you go to sleep. If you only realized its beating drives me to near insanity and back again, sets my mind in disarray. In my fascination with the sounds that enter my room all is silenced as that scream shrieks through my room like the night before, “Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!!! Help!”

I jolt out of bed, the sound so close it hurts my ears. I forget what was on my mind; the worries fade, for I am safe behind these wooden walls unlike the owner of that voice, so painful, so lonely. If only I could help. I walk to the window peer through the blinds. All I see is dark, “Ahhhhhhhhh!!! Help m…..”Where is that voice coming from? As I try to make sense of what little is visible outside my window, a copter’s beam reflects off the glass showing me my reflection, or yours. I remember you robbed me of my soul sucked the life right out my eyes. You killed my mother with your selfish ways. I can never forgive you, wish I could forget yet every time I stare at my refection I see you. It is my living hell, a reminder of what you took from me, a reminder that I am just like you. I can smell Channel No. 5. It smells so real it makes me sneeze. I then wake to the taste of cherry lip balm, sweet, soft, wet…