Sleep paralysis, like your body
is wearing a ice-en straight jacket
and your mouth is laced up with skin.
I could see the blanket, the pillow, I could feel
myself trapped within layers of
suffocating covers, every neurone struggling to
free my trapped limbs
sapped of strength
As though my spine had snapped, and the
length of Central Nervous System had
strapped itself to the base of my bones
I tried to yell, to scream to moan
MOVE
WAKE UP
at my body
couldn't sob
robbed of movement

I sank into the silence of a nightmare

This is what I saw there:

My childhood home, demolished, my accommodation
stood sturdy on it's grave as though it had
never existed
My Lady and My Mother were there, and they
resisted my protests, laughed cruelly in jest as they
marched into my flatmates room
I ran after them as their voices loomed like
mocking magpies
Every word a jab and peck

Then

An awful clarity
In hilarity, my flatmate jested that 'junk' had
been left in his room, but as I looked in, expecting gloom, I
saw, instead, the living room of my childhood home
Nailed down where it stood by the
additives of a university life.
I didn't see the past strife, but photographs of happy
times lay scattered or enlarged, their presence
marred by the fact
that, if they were here,
then no-one had wanted them
No one had cared
They had been left
lost
littered
scattered into the breeze of
demolition

Then calm
By the fireplace that had never been used
The adopted Nan sat and soothed by her
Life torn husband's side
Fire resided beside them as she and he
coaxed the flames across the wall
missing the grating
Every flickering flame pressed into a ball
as it spread
I lost my head staring at her peaceful white hair
She wasn't stuck in her chair
Or swathed in blankets
She looked right how she was
And I felt bad because I took a foam and
dampened the flame from the walls loam
Fearing injury I stole her
warmth
But she was always so exothermic
She doesn't haunt she fills

Willed forward with affection
But her questions sank into
a sudden guilt of my self-neglection
and as I tried
to hold
myself
together
I found my breath
was snatched
I didn't want to let her down
Couldn't bear for an
angel to see
a frown
so
I tried to catch
the tip of my mouth
and force myself to smile

But she knew all, of course she did,
and as I was marched up the aisle of
wakefulness
A single tear slid down my cheek
An emotion was allowed
to leak

Loss and Shame
Guilt and Pain

You shouldn't be like this
*Take care of yourself