Spinning Apart

Every now and then the things that I believe in suddenly seem to lose their meaning. I spin apart, so fast that bits and pieces of me are torn away until suddenly I realize that in my effort to get as far away from myself as I can, I have lost too much. And maybe I wish to forget the pieces that I lost, maybe I did not hold on to them as I should and that is the reason that circumstances were able to tear them from me. If I could stop, if I could find stillness for just one moment sometimes I think I might recover...something.  But the terrain of my life has changed and even if I could recover them, the pieces no longer fit. So I continue to run crossing lines I never thought to cross, and with each new crossing I search out every reason to be gone, convincing myself there's nothing here to hold onto.

Nightmare

The cold is a premonition, a warning that I am about to drift into a familiar nightmare. I can taste it, smell it. Panic washes over me in freezing waves slowing my limbs even as my mind races, seeking some escape all the while knowing there is none. I have dreamed this dream before. With every breath I take the cold seeps in like poison turning my flesh to ice so brittle, so fragile, I know that I must shatter at the slightest touch. What terrifies me most is the intense beauty of everything in the dream: so brutally brilliant, so perfect that to look on it is painful. Somehow I know that I also have been transformed-all my flaws vanished-replaced with an unearthly perfection. The cold is unbearable, the beating of my heart painful, the fear that I will break apart intolerable. Tears, crystalline and shining freeze on my pale cheeks a testament to the sorrow flooding my veins, turning my blood to ice water. The tears are usually what breaks the spell and I find myself in my bed shivering, trembling, heart pounding. Although I am aware each time that this is merely a nightmare I am also deeply convinced that one day I will fail to awaken from it.