Night Terror

Have you ever wondered whether those were your own hands in front of your face, shaking? Your own

head that’s pounding, aching? A cat or an intruder in the garden, the two are near the same to a lying

brain that processes thoughts too quickly.

Do I hear a monsters footfalls or my own heartbeat, I know that ears can be mistaken, but louder!

Louder! Louder! It pounds. Louder grows the beat of a heart under floorboards where no body’s lying.

Though it’s I grown mad under the watch of the evil eye, tonight it is I who’s dying.

Here I lie at the end of my wits, the end of my wick. Candle, don’t burn out and leave me here in

shadows.

Everyone has a few skeletons in the back of their closet, but mine have late night meetings in the

hallway just beyond the door or around my bed. The barely there light highlights barely there figures.

Barely there whispers of secrets barely remembered.

A sound wakened me from the terrors that distracted, a groan, it could’ve been the sound of a million

things but that sound I knew it was the groan of mortal terror, a sound too familiar from my throat, still I

over-reacted. Terror from my own chest or a ghost, the two are near the same to a lying brain that

cannot process thoughts any longer.

Not quite awake but aware, my jaw hurts from gritting my teeth. I didn’t open my eyes because I didn’t

want to see. Louder, louder! It’s only a bird pounding against my window, it cannot see what’s killing it,

neither can we. I fall slowly back to nightmares disguised as sleep.

Surely, the morning will find me, wide eyed, sweating and paralyzed, deafened by fear but still alive. Left

without sleep. Until then this is my own nightly fight against the ghost of an overactive mind. I lay me

down to sleep knowing that the sun will eventually rise.