The Long Night

I am here but not here

Focusing on the creep

And windows in my darkened room

Are they locked?

Will I be taken?

The empty seat of hope or logic pounds in my chest with these unwanted intrusions

Curling under the covers in the dark

Coldness, jelly spine, deadened limbs, internal collapse

Stopping the unwelcome vision of death impossible

Frozen, motionless but for the pounding in my chest

I am here but not here




Somehow sleep eventually finds me

I don’t remember how

Awakened by the early morning song

Feeling the long drop of dread into the bottom of my stomach

I rub my eyes and open my mouth to let out my resignation in a sigh

I fall out of bed and into my clothes

Knowing terrors arrival when day becomes night

I am here but not here




How do I release my mind and body from this terror that always finds me?

How do I find the deep well of peace or the ferocious bite I need for such a task?

I will find it

I will not give over my light to the darkness of my imagination

What you say? The despair I face rests in my Imagination?

Could there be a way to quiet the thoughts that drive my body to the unwelcome sensations?

What if I could imagine the darkened creep to be a soft kitten? A bowl of ice cream? My grandmother’s face?

What if I came into my body a superhero and pinged! and powed! The darkness adrift?

Outside of me now

I can see it when the light shines through

That it is I who created the creep

It is I who destroys the creep!

I am here now