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?.?.00 Waiting For Sleep There is very little I can do right. My whole sorry existence is testament to this. I cycle in exaggerated sessions of light and dark - fluttering around in the pale lamp of moonglow one moment and plunging into crevasses of blackness the next. I cry until a small lake may be filled by my tears and try to cut so my blood may do the same. I never have the courage to just take that knife and slice my forearm up and down the length of it; I just trace and wish and sometimes treat myself to the gloriously numb satisfaction of a just-burnt matchhead against my skin. I have too many scars, I may think to myself; and then I ponder that I do not have enough. The strength of my feeling has crawled out of my heart; the sureness and immediate comfort of my beloved doesn't seem to be there anymore. I can feel faint traces - it is there, it is still there, it is just hidden by an impenetrable wall of fear, apathy, and lies masquerading as quiet doubt. Shadow thoughts trail everything I think and do, whispering in dark voice of paranoid wonder and stroking the cheek of my subconscious with navy-velvet fingers. "They are lies. Nothing is true - it's all been made up, and you are a fool." I try to dismiss them, wriggle free of their damaging touch, close my inner eye to the false images they display, but it clings like the smell of stale smoke to bed clothes and curtains. I try to be upbeat about it, challenging the seductively mad voices with casual phrases: "Well, if this is a lie, I don't want the truth." They chuckle knowingly, in tones of condescending silkiness, slithering away and leaving me to cry and deliberately avoid thought, until they visit again. "It is all a lie. He doesn't really want to be with you. No-one does. None of your friends are actually your friends. They just want something from you." They pause, a moment of silence in which to let my crushed spirit deflate a little more, before delivering the final blow: "Yet, you have nothing to offer, so it is all for fun. To mess with what little mind you have left." Sometimes, I just yearn for sleep without end. "She shuts the doors and lights and lays her body on the bed, where images and words are running deep; she has too much pride to pull the sheets above her head, so quietly she lays and waits for sleep." "Wait For Sleep", from "Images and Words", 1992 © Dream Theater |