It was the night that forced me to write. I had to write, or there would be nothing after.

There is a weight, an entity, an anchor, pulling part of my soul down.

Every night without words causes the tumour to sink deeper, and corrupt more.

Is this an escape, a temporary reprieve or just a useless feel-good exercise.

Is something that makes you feel good a useless exercise?

Insignificant musing.

The wind whistles into, and out of, the decrepit apartment windows, begging for a proper entrance, or for total submission.

Brick, steel, and decades of existence don't bow down so easily.

Strange mechanical noises outside, first thought to be ladders on a parked trailer, and have now become whatever nightmare my sleep-deprived, horror-accustomed mind can imagine.

An all-consuming, fluorescent, white glow blocks everything in the room behind the screen.

The room is 81 per cent darkness.

What skeletons can dance in so much darkness?

There are also ghosts, and they whisper memories best left forgotten. I feel them crawling up my legs in the dark, edging up to the white light, but never entering into view.

They wait to scream out, and startle me. I could only be so lucky.

Forever they remain nameless. Forever they smile outside my vision.

Forever they know everything I do not.

 

You didn't notice. Sleep is your natural state. Envy fills me, as dreams are my favourite place. The only place that makes sense to me. The only place where existence is fair.

Fairness is subjective, like justice, but I trust my shadow's judgement enough to lose myself there.

Those are the lucky moments. It is more common to not remember my journeys there, and maybe that is for the best.

Imagine waking up from paradise every day, and coming back here.

Perpetual disappointment.

The radiator clicks.

I couldn't buy sleep tonight, not in a bottle of pills, a bottle of whiskey, or a bottle of self-loathing.

I guess that's why they call it the blues.

 

Written February 21