Sleepless Nights

The prickling sensation of a furtive tear of sweat sliding down my forehead woke me up in the middle of the night. Like a blind mouse I squirmed in confusion. My heart was beating like drums to a mad rhythm that becomes impossible to follow.

It’s been like this for many nights, sleepless nights, now.

I looked to my side and there you were, so calm and tender-looking. Your beauty shone radiantly in spite of the complete darkness that encompassed our bedroom.

How could you be the same girl: protagonist of my nightmares?

I woke up again.

The cold night’s air was still with shock, while I shook with agitation.

A chilling gale came through the window, resembling the icy touch of an iron blade against my skin. I felt like a fish out of the water, unable to breathe.

You, however, lay peacefully beside me, unaware of the commotion you caused inside my mind. It is not only your murderous glare that haunts me in the hours of darkness, it is a curse.

Once again my dreams were darker that the stormy sky.

It is a crime: so many sleepless nights.

I feared the way your arms choke me when I sleep and hug me when I wake. I felt trapped beside you, in the bottomless gap between your restful expression and my horrific nightmares.

It’s been too many nights, next to you, sharing a bed with my worries.

I have waited for sleep to come during endless nights, and as soon as my lids are closed it is doom I see upon me.

To sleep is to die.

What’s worse is waking up every time to the fact that things are not what you imagined them to be, but knowing that any minute, they could be.

I can almost sense the iron scent in the air around you and me.

Every time I worry, I fear, and I wish could stop dreaming about this fatal end.

Shock had become usual to me, but not like this.

My routine of terror has been stained by a few dark, red droplets.

I look at you but this time your expression is not of innocent rest, it is of blank horror. Your breathing has been extinguished and I hold the weapon.

I drown under the soaked sheets that weigh down upon me, while they absorb my bloody sins.

Bleeding is the heart’s way of crying.

So, in the waking, my consciousness has betrayed our love, your life, my sanity.

…Now death is fast asleep.