musings of a star

Dawn breaks.... the shakes... its all too familiar.

I sluggishly rise, my weary and bloodshot eyes trained downward at trembling hands as I place one on the side of the coffin I lay myself to rest in each night. It's no use; I swiftly fall onto my back once again.

Coldness. Silence, save for my belabored breaths. Too familiar.

...How long has it been since the nightmares ceased?

After a lifetime of rest denied by the crepuscular terrors conjured in the deepest, most decrepit pits of my amygdala, that night's Happy Dream remains a part of me like a third-degree burn upon my very consciousness.

And then there was the following night's phantasm, its manifestations of bliss, safety, and comfort in indulgence of that which I long for most in this world, ever since irrevocably etched into each of my five senses.

Steadily falling into a panic at the whims of increasingly frantic thoughts, I clasp at my chest in a foolhardy attempt to exercise jurisdiction over my racing heart, but it is to no avail.

It happened again—as it has each night since then—I desperately wrench open my eyes and try my hardest not to recall the Happy Dream I had just awoken from.

I begin to count the stone bricks in the surrounding catacomb walls, then the number of planks comprising my casket; I forget what I am doing and start tapping my foot in rhythm with Pale Horse's hoof-steps—at least, until he stands still. I bite at my scabbed lips and pick at the blood-encrusted hangnails at my fingertips, the redolence and taste of lingering death washing over me with each exhalation.

I'm overwhelmed, but not by any of these sensations. 

I lived until recently thinking that the only way I could exist was by becoming as small and inconsequential as possible. I did my best to be of joy, of comfort, or at least of use to those around me, but when those same people would ask what I wanted, I had no honest answer.

Yet now, abandoned by my nightmares, and with such a clear and inescapable window into my soul thrust in front of my face each time I lay myself to sleep—I understand for the first time what it means to desire, to hope, for my own sake. 

I recall the countenance that overwrites my monochrome self-expression with flustered smiles, joyous tears, and dancing limbs; I recall the embrace that so effortlessly melts away fatigue and worry, eclipsing all somatic pain in its soothing warmth—

Yet, as always, I awoke: my heart broken anew, mired in sobering reality, drowning, as another night's sublime illusion lie shattered, its glass-like shards stained in the hues of my deepest feelings and embedded into my brain.

So cruel...  Where have my nightmares gone?

An absurd question I already know the answer to—next to dreams such as these, reality is the most terrifying of all.

How can I even begin to change such immutable things?