I am not afraid of the night; I am afraid of its obligations. That tight fist of knowing that I could not have been born this way. For every fear there is said to be a triggering effect, someone holding the gun saying, ‘this may be my fault, but it’s still your story.’ A fear of sleep is a fear of losing control. In my hometown, there was a boy up my street that knew every part of you is a mouth. Look at you, how open you are. How your body can only say ‘yes’ to me. Look how your fight forgot you. I can never land a punch in my dreams, never can rip my attacker apart, nail by nail and see how helpless that house was. I’m not a fair fight, I don’t know a lot of words, I don’t know how to say I slept with every man after you and woke up on fire. I don’t want to say everyone in my dreams is born out of you. I don’t know how to say you cannot have me. Not now. Not again. Don’t sleep by yourself. There must be some part of you that doesn’t trust the rest of you. Try to find someone who don’t want to gouge out her eyes just to make sense of the dark. This was never about finding a savior to share the bed with.
I am not lonely. I am not the weak calling my sickness the tyranny. What I feel is what I can’t hold, what I would win the world for.
