I’M ONLY SLEEPING

It always starts with the dreams. Writhing under white sheets, plucked specifically from the shelf for the cleanliness that the lack of any suffocating colour suggests. Sweaty limbs draped clumsily over the covers that equally beckon her all day and tangle her up when she falls into them at night. Her dreams are horrifyingly predictable, in the way that she can predict herself pulling the sliver of skin at the side of her thumbnail far enough that the pink, glistening flesh beneath is exposed and stinging, or how she tells herself that maybe this time the wine won’t feel like it’s blistering a hole into her esophagus (she knows it will). The rituals of her own subconscious mind are clear to her:

teeth falling out in unstoppable succession, leaving glossy holes between yellowing walls of enamel

embraces from an old lover, whispering kisses lining her collarbone before

it’s the first teacher she really disliked, the smell of his unwashed shirt as he hands back paper after paper, red ink scarring all of her numbers and letters

in her childhood bedroom, butter yellow wallpaper and ceramic animals smiling down at her

smiling down at her from pink and purple shelves, the soft voice of her mother as she flicks through well-loved storybook pages while

he looks right into her, muscles tensed, hands firm on her hands, eyes brimming with

wet, stinking mud that tightens around her feet with every step, drips from her trembling fingertips, swallows the faceless people around her screaming for

decaying teeth in the purple sinking mud

red pen ink scrawled across the peeling wallpaper

warm arms and voices and cold ceramic smiling and

unfamiliar houses and the cat from down the road

claws out

leaping

Tonight was no different, and the dreams came thick and heavy, the kind that stay stuck to the roof of her mouth until at least half the day is over. The air is as weighted as her dreams this particular morning, as she lies in a panting heap, belly up, neck stiff, the phantom mud still gripping her ankles and the whirring fan in the corner a mimic of the overworked computer in her first year physics classroom. Opening the window will be the first consolation.

She pushes herself upright and digs the soft flesh of her palm against her clogged eyes, massages her tender jaw; the uncomfortable aftermath of grinding her teeth while asleep a constant reminder of her bad habits.

those teeth, falling out and falling out, falling through her fingertips, how can there be more and more and more

She crawls over her creaking mattress, across the white sheet, from one tarnished, clammy side to the cleaner side, naked without its duvet. Reaching out her legs she drags herself, inch by inch, to the edge of the bed. She places her feet on the wooden floor, the first coolness she’s felt in hours crawling up her ankles and calves, and she finally lets out the breath that she’s unconsciously been holding. The window waits at the far edge of the room, and by the time she’s

stood up on reluctant knees,

stretched out the hours of turning and tightening and twisting,

gulped down the room temperature, lifeless few inches of water on her bedside table, trying to wash away the murky taste coating her mouth and throat,

wiped her mouth,

rubbed her eyes and jaw again,

clawed through her matted hair, clawed,
clawed,
clawed,
loosened hair snaking around her fingers
fluttering to the floor in a cobweb of discarded frizz

and padded over to the window,

carefully avoiding heaps of clothes and meaningless letters and half empty mugs,

she can hardly remember

his breath on her neck, her own senseless surrender, his brimming brown eyes soft like the careful brush strokes on the smiling face of the ceramic calf

The window gives way after a push and an ocean breeze washes over her, a rare caress on her weary eyelids, her gently lined forehead and mouth and her aching collarbone. People amble past her window, cars stop behind more cars, a dog barks; dizzying itself on an astroturf lawn a few streets away, and the world keeps moving.

the cat is inches away from her face, its talons extended in frighteningly close proximity to the widened glass panes of her eyes, its fur yellow and decaying teeth bared

and he is in her arms, a soft crescent of life, his weight pale beside the heavy lump in her chest, their cheeks both slick with the same unspoken tide and


The fresh air isn’t enough. She needs a hot drink, so hot that it scalds her cheeks and leaves her gums raw to the mercy of the cold wind

piles of teeth, endless bloody

gaps

But the kettle is down the stairs and the stairs are through the door and the door seems so far away from the window. The door is back past the heaps of clothes and meaningless letters and half empty mugs and over the desk chair that doesn’t fit under her desk so that it’s wedged at an awkward angle between the bed and the desk and the fan has to be moved to open the door and the door has to be wrestled open to free it from the strangling door frame.

and mud covers the floor anyway, the floor is dense, dripping mud and she’s sinking and it’s round her throat, and the numbers and the letters are spiralling down too, bleeding red ink into the mud and her mother’s still trying to flip the pages, she doesn’t notice the mud, why doesn’t she notice the mud, she just keeps reading the same lines over and over and over and it’s warm it’s so warm it’s so warm

Outside the world is moving, and simultaneously completely stagnant. Perhaps nothing is waiting for her, perhaps something is, but if so it waits out of reach, shrouded in fog, refusing even the dignity of an outline to chase.

And what is the point of any of this, what is the meaning here? The drive that will push her to go to the door and open the door and go through the door? There are only more doors, and more floors and windows and further and further to go, for something that keeps hiding and hiding and hiding. The words rattle round the back of her skull, clattering like loose teeth in an empty jar: point, meaning, drive. Point. Meaning. Drive. The words promise something: some shape, some profound revelation, but

Point

Meaning

Drive

They’re just syllables, sharp and useless and stupid and there is no epiphany.

And so she closes the window She climbs back into bed, and it’s so easy and

butter wallpaper so warm

and she she

sweaty shirts toothy kisses claws

she

sh

dreams

It always starts with the dreams.