Comforter

It's been three days and I can't seem to shake this fit. I just want to lay in bed and drown in my blankets and pillows. I want to hold my babies and make them stay in bed with me forever where it's soft and safe.

When I lay in bed I float into and among the clouds but I don't feel free. I feel...translucid. I feel like I'm moving in between, within and without. I feel like everything that my physical body perceives is taken in and diffused until it becomes nothing. Nothing. Meaning nothing. Nothing means anything but everything. I hear their voices, their footsteps, their movements. I feel the cold, the heat, their breath. I smell them. Their skin. Their breath. Their hair. And I want to   get up. Just get up. But I can't. I can. I won't. I will. I will.

But when I lay in bed, she's here again. She's real and I can feel her and touch her and hear her voice. She touches me like she never will again. We can talk and laugh and cry together. She can comb my hair and hold my hands and kiss me. She's here with me and I don't want to leave her. When she left, I wasn't there and I can never forgive myself for that. So how can I leave her now? I know I must and I know that I will. But why can't I hold the sun up as high as I can where I can for as long as I can? If I can feel her warmth for just a little longer, can't I?

I know it's just my comforter. Can't I just pretend a little longer?

Uninvited.

Today I feel like my eyes refuse to stay open. They're heavy and dry and rebellious. They reflect my heart. I guess it's just one of those days where yellow is too yellow and seasoned chicken tastes like dry toast. The silverware is staring at me relentlessly like stone cold anarchists refusing to do their job. But I'm sure it's probably me.

I don't know what happened. I was perfectly fine, perfectly. Then all of a sudden BAM! I was blinded my this same dang wretched demon that has been feasting on my soul for decades. He empties me out so fast that I don't even know he's there until he's already had his fill. When he feeds, it feels like hunger pangs. It feels like exhaustion. It feels like grief. It feels like failure. It feels like death. And the worst of it all is that after being familiar so intimately for so many years, each time that he comes to visit a part of me opens the door and says, "Ah there you are old fellow, where have you been for so long? Come, let's have a bite shall we?" And how can I not be inviting to such an old acquaintance, for one who was once considered a friend?

Gah. You know, today just wasn't a good day for a visit...