Slipping In and Out of Sleep
Waking fully is rarely an option.
The line between sleeping and wakefulness, dreaming and consciousness is so fine these days. So permeable. Like the surface of a body of water.
I pass between one state and another with the ease of a gentle bob, buoyed up just above the surface for breath, and then pulled lightly but surely back under.
And once I’m bobbing, I’ll continue to do so for hours because each time I’m brought up above the surface, it’s just barely. Just barely.
And it feels so good and so easy and so inevitable to slip back under.
Mornings and afternoons pass entirely in this way.
It doesn’t matter whether the dreams I’m pulled back into are pleasant or not. Often, they are not.
She is usually down there, and whether or not she commits any sin on that particular visit, there is the awareness in me always that she has.
She’s the monster who should be lurking at the very darkest depths and yet is so often wherever it is that I find myself — just below the surface if need be.
In and out, up and down, submerge and breathe.
Time passes without me.
