...to sleep, perchance to dream...

Can you see me?

I think I'm fading.  All my edges gone soft and gray.

Can you see me?

Am I dreaming?  Or am I just caught here...in this moment...with no beginning or end?

No rest?

No sleep?

The sleepless nights have been piling up again.

One day bleeds into the next...with nothing to staunch the flow.

I drift and doze, in fits and starts...stirring at some sound or other...some furtive shift from dark corners...or the restless toss and turn of the toddler beside me...

I startle awake...gasping, sometimes...shaking off cobwebs.  My subconscious having found reason or resolution to any number of stressors it's been working at.

I try to count...100 down to 1, then back up again...but my mind interrupts with

did you?

could you?

have you?

should you?

It churns away in the midnight hours...leaping from one query to the next.

Determined to solve it all by morning.

I turn my head slowly to where the clock beckons from the corner.

Numbers aglow.

A groan from deep within as I watch the minutes flick by.

The room is wreathed in blues and greys.

Weak yellow finds a path along the floor...bringing moonlight in to taunt me as I abandon the closed lids of wishfulness and stare into oppressive dark.

I try to turn it off.

To tune it out.

To silence the sigh and the snarl.

I call upon the ghosts.

Summon the day's quiet pleasures.

Try to breathe life into the moving pictures of memory.

But they fade. Go dark.

Leaving words and images behind.

Items to address.

Problems to solve.

Challenges to overcome.

My days are so full of the movement from one person's need to another's,

that rational thought has fallen into the dark place.

Night-time has become 'office hours' for the mind that never sleeps.

When order and hour melt into the shadow, it begins the untangling...pulling on one thought or another...one thread that unwinds then jerks at a knot...

Sleep is impossible.

Breathing slowly...

Counting...slower...

Blinking open when the weight of thought becomes too heavy on the lids.

Within these walls, all others sleep.

They rest and they dream.

If I hold my breath, I can hear theirs through open doorways.  Steady in and steady out.

I try to match the pace with one or other, and choke.

I rise.

Countless times.

To scrawl out some reminder.

To note some clarity.

To schedule some task.

I rise.

And return.

Curl this way...then that...

Hot...then cold...

Digging my toes into the soft blanket...then kicking them free...

Staring...once more...and again...at the clock...

Unspoken dare to stop.

Tick...to-o-o-o-o-o-o-ck it blinks.

The room fogs over as lighter greys push out the dark.

The pale moonlight streak fades back into itself.

The room re-emerges...furnishings coming back into solid form and walls climbing.

I am awake.

Still.

Not again.

I am awake and I am tired, unrested.

I am tired.

Bone weary.

Brain addled.

The work of night having worn me to the bone.

I am tired.

And terrified that another sleepless night will follow...