Cold sweat. Awake.
Reality?
The world snaps back into focus. Vision spotted with holes through which you glimpse the fading images of dream(?).
Fainter and fainter, the holes close as you try in vain to peer through.
Snippets you see. A pretty smile. Lush green. Grey terror. Love, calm, rip, rush.
Image shifts to feeling, lingering trails streaming through to your heart.
It hurts. Your head pounds. Your breath rasps back into your chest.
Have you been breathing? Forgotten in the rush of dream(was it?), basic biological necessities.
You sit up.
You grasp your face to see if you’re still you. Unsure. Sweat soaks your hair.
Eyes wet. Burn at the edges from which reality encroaches.
Pounding head swims in the waters of where you were, bobbing as you try to reorient to the rules of this place, not that.
Breathe deeply.
Ow. Ribs ache.
Latch on to the pain as you reinhabit the body to which you belong.
Feet numb and cold.
Cold, despite being still wrapped in covers you struggle to free yourself from.
Some dreams(seemed real to me) linger pleasantly caressing your psyche as you ease yourself into the waking world. Gently crossing the threshold of sleep.
Others grip and throttle you about, hurling you out of your own head. Giving you the ol’ bum rush from the interiors of your mind.
From deep in the dark places you should not be.
The places you would barely recognize as you.
For they must be, yes? Even the ones that scare you? The ones so alien and discordant with your very existence.
The ones that seem to overwrite the collective hallucination agreed upon as real.
That’s a part of you.
Right?
I’m not so sure.
-j.e. pittman