Vox Nihilim

The dawn still rests far off from here. I'm awake and still swatting away the cobwebs from another night's fitful sleep. I'm past the point where these stillborn rests are enough. The sweat clings to my skin in a salty sheen as the nightmare slinks away like a freshly cracked egg yolk on the lip of a storm drain. I'm tired of this place. Tired of this middle existence. Tired of listening to the staccato clock ticks at an hour beyond reason, wondering when my aching eyes will finally shut, and let this day with it's echoing footfalls die a dignified death.


I'm pacing through the empty house in the dark and wondering if this will be my inevitability. If I am as destined to this crushing alone as a wheat kernel is destined to be ground down on the wheel. I hate feeling this way. The self-doubt picks at my mind like a hungry crow at a roadside kill. How much longer then? How much more? There is no answer. None that makes sense.


I try the pillow again. I look for the tail of sleep that I might grab and be pulled along. Instead my legs dance, my mind spasms and frets...I worry about things whose outcomes are already decided and people who I can't help. I think of her, all those miles away ... churning her bedsheets like so much butter and wanting to feel a warmth beside her. The ache grows hungry and bites with its sharp, uneven teeth. The clock's heartbeat slows even further.


"I must find a way.
I must find away."


I try to rationalize. Try to find that shiny glimmer of patience that I rub like the tattered edge of an old security blanket once the sun is up and the world is sane again. But I can't. Here in the dark... I can only wait until the sky begins to bruise and hope for the comfort that comes with the daylight.