When did it happen?
When did I stop being awake?
I don't know if I've ever really been awake.

What does it feel like
to want to do anything that you have to open your eyes for?
"Wake up," they say,
"You're going to sleep away your entire life."
But I see more with eyes closed
than I ever have with eyes open;
What really separates a dream from reality?
My dreams interrupt my reality all the time
and I can never be certain of anything I think is real.

All I know is that we're staring at the ceiling at 2am
just trying to figure each other out,
and suddenly I'm somewhere else
and you're someone else
and I'm saying things to you that don't make sense
and you're confused.

I'll come back from a dream just as confused as you are,
Not with eyes torn open, because they hadn't been shut,
but with nothing more than a shake of the head,
an embarrassed apology
and a disappointment in my inability to remain conscious
even for you.

I know it scares my mother to know
that I drove 62 miles to see her
but I can only remember 37 of them.
But I can't tell you how many poems I don't remember writing,
that contain words I've never used before
and a feeling I didn't know could be described.

When I was a little girl
all I wanted to do was sleep.
I dreamt of growing up to find a husband
and living in a beautiful house with him and our children,
and I'd be happy and have everything I could want.
I dreamt it.
And it felt real.

I decided then that if I could dream it, that was enough
because at least for the time that I slept, it would be real.
It's harder to make sense of real life
when you aren't required to be a part of it.

This brain will never have the control
to stop from slipping in and out of consciousness.
I may never fully wake up.
Any hour may have in store for me only
a dark fog of amnesia and a life that isn't mine,
ready to pull me in and drown me beneath the dangers of my own eyelids.

But that place is the place I know the best,
better than any place conscious minds have ever met.

Eyes closed.
Eyes open.
I don't know where I am,
but I am here.