i exist [as the definition of nonexistence]

insomniac's lullaby

nightmare number one.

  We are lying in bed, you and I

 And I am watching the moonlight bathe you

A ghostly shade of blue

Like some underwater daydream

A sculpture of stardust and cream

With eyes the gold of twin suns

And dips and curves and swells like waves

In the ocean

I reach out to touch you

To trace comets across your skin,

When

The world begins to burn

Flames licking up your sides like ravished tongues,

Gnashing white hot teeth digging deeper into our flesh.

You reach up and grasp my face

Between fiery fingers

And pull me down into a kiss

A kiss that tastes like ash and embers

Your tongue searing my cheeks.

The acrid scent of smoke clings to us as

We burn.

nightmare number two.

I am sitting on a park bench

And my mother is beside me

Everything comes in early morning shades of soft

And I remember how she used to be

A woman made of paint and soft words,

I can almost convince myself that she was never anything

But good

And that is the worst part

The nightmarish part

Because the woman I am sitting beside is not good

When I realize this she begins to decay,

And she is no longer cotton candy soft,

Rather she is made of barbed wire and syringe needles,

But then she tells me that she loves me and

It is so, so easy to convince myself

that she was never anything

But good

nightmare number three.

I tell the truth

nightmare number four.

I never tell the truth.

nightmare number five.

You really do hate me in

The end

No matter what

nightmare number six.

I think it is a winter day

The world is frozen in time,

Raindrops still in the air, movements paused.

We are standing

No longer hand in hand

And you tell me that you don't love me

Not anymore

And just as you begin to walk away

The world rewinds

Resets

I think it is a winter day

And you tell me that you don't love me

Not anymore

Rewind

Not anymore

Reset

Not anymore

I never get the chance to ask

What I could have done to fix it

nightmare number seven.

I step into my mother's shedded skin

And become her

From the hair left brittle from too much dye

To the sunken, aching need for

Some addictive substance

I abuse and neglect and destroy,

Careless in a way that is entirely too familiar

History repeats itself,

Parents passing down their terrible traits

Like hand me downs, like favorite toys,

Like a kid saying "I wanna be just like my parents!"

I do not want to become you,

Pregnant at seventeen with a child

You threw away like a Chinese takeout box

I do not want to become you,

So self-absorbed and pitiful that you would

Break not one heart,

But three

My father still compares me to you,

Because he knows that the idea

Terrifies me

My little sister still cries for you.

But she is not the one who is

Becoming you.

nightmare number eight.

The doctors tell me there is something

               Wrong

With me

Nightmare number nine.

I play a game of Russian roulette

With my Anxiety

And my Self-confidence

Let's see which one of us dies first.