meet me under the streetlight

when the clock strikes Tomorrow

let’s be wolves, prowling neighborhood streets

howl our misery to the moon

we’ll be boys again come dawn

but for now

we are mere animals

haunted creatures of night

The walls have always had it

The mold, the heaving dark mass

Silently, insidiously poisoning the air and rotting the wood

Of the room I live in, the one I never leave

It leaks into the carpet

Staining the walls from the inside out like spilled black ink

Breathing leaves a bitter taste

And makes the inside of my throat feel coated with illness and spores

It whispers as it creeps closer to me

Where I lay in the centre of the room

The world outside these walls is poisoned, coated in a thick black fog of decay and suffering

The inside is just as filthy

But mushrooms grow in my throat and I lay still

It murmurs soft sentiment

The walls are encased in the writhing darkness

A disease that has crawled its way up

From a place deep in the earth

The mold reaches my body on the floor

Creeps into my ears

Nestles into my eyes

My vision is dancing black spots

And in my ears I hear it talking

I know where this ends

I know I have to stand up

My heart still beats, my muscles work

But in my lungs are growing splotches of black fungus

And my mind is a hive, a clamour of voices

There’s a quiet voice telling me to get up, get up, run away

But I don’t

I don’t move

I don’t move

And the softly singing shadow that slithered its way into my mind has risen to a scream

The eternal hum of the universe has twisted into a choir of cruel and Godly voices, shouting, shouting

I take up hardly any space at all, and yet I have failed to justify my place

Who I am is not enough to carry the weight of my consciousness

And so this mold decomposes me and I am thankful for it

Once I’m dirt maybe I’ll be worth something

Once I’m dirt maybe I can rest

Who could refuse such an offer?

I go to sleep. I fall asleep. Then I wake up because a mouse is making a great noise. Well, not great but big enough to keep me awake. I try to scare it. Nothing works. For several days a mousetrap (mine doesn't kill mouse) is empty. My sleep is gone now. I might as well go to the living room. There. On. The. Sofa. Is. A. Big. Fat. Rat. I scream. Apparently hard enough for my neighbours to hear. They call the police. Now I have to tell the police my story of the rat. They laugh. Why? They go into my living room. They catch the rat. Now I'm free. I go to sleep. The mouse starts to make noise again. That freaking damned mouse.

The night descends upon me

I want to fall asleep, enter a peaceful dream

The panic sets in on me in it’s place

I have to dilute my scream

The night brings its own darkness to the center of my heart

I feel such intense agony as I watch fragments of my soul depart

The void of the night brings turmoil when I realize at these hours I’m on my own

Any comfort I try to take to bed leaves me painfully more alone

The night makes me feel like I’m in a straight jacket made of leather

I lay the desperate for sleep

I can only imagine ways to sleep forever

MaryFN

I sat there, a bead of sweat dripping down the side of my face as my chest hurridly heaved up and down. All I wanted to do right now was sleep, but I have issues with that as it is.

I looked at the camera that was placed in my room just a few hours ago, my eyes saying, "I hope your happy, look at what you've caused."

My body felt cold, yet my room was an oven. I was abnormally sweaty, dispite my body tempature. It was a cold sweat, sticky and uncomfortable.

The feeling that resinated through out my body was pulsating like a horrible headache. My figure hurt and I felt as though I would pass out. I couldn't think properly, but at the same time, thoughts were running through my head at the speed of rapids.

What if they're watching you? Someone could die tomrrow. You should never check the door, someone could shoot you. (Sister) might be choking in her sleep. (Brother) is going to get taken away by CPS because you failed. You're going to fail the nineth grade.

None of these thoughts made sense! Nothing was corralated with the other or even relevant to the situation!

They still kept storming through my head, tears now streaming down my face, making a damp spot on the sheets below me.

I put my hands over my ears in a feble attempt to stop these thoughts.

"Please... all I want is sleep."

Picture a meadow. A green meadow surrounded by tall trees and blue skies that are littered with soft clouds. Do you see it? I never could. It was a fleeting impression that so desperately wanted to become reality. I have spent hours trying to force images to appear behind my eyelids. I fought with my head, but all that I saw was Darkness. This frustrated me for years.

I didn't understand how visualization worked. I could recall what a dog looked like but I felt like I didn't have the visual image. How did I remember what the world looked like? Why do we close our eyes to imagine things?

I'm an artist, and I've a special talent for "visualizing" my art before my media touches the canvas. My mental plan didn't feel like an image. It felt like a suppressed memory. Other moments my plans were almost like a ghost. The art was already there, I just had to reveal it. Either way, my art turned out close to how I imagined it.

Last year I suffered from insomnia for a few weeks. I spent many nights seeing Darkness. It was during those nights that I discovered something.

I want you to try and close your eyes again. Look. What is it? It's your eyelids. If there is any light seeping through your skin, cover your eyes with your hands. If there's any light, you might not see it. Do you see Darkness? It's not the black that everyone describes it as. There's actually phantom reds, greens, and blues. Every time I see Darkness, he likes to show me his art. His favorite style is abstract and it's always moving. Sometimes the phantom colors will swirl slowly, a soothing dance that helps me sleep. He draws lines and shapeds that play and tangle together. For most of my life, Darkness dispalyed only abstract art to me. Maybe he did this because I never appreciated his work until I was stuck late every night gazing at his amazing motion art.

There's a reason that we close our eyes to visualize. Darkness gives us a blank canvas. Before my insomnia, I thought it was only my imagination that caused the phantom colors to dance, but I officially met Darkness. He isn't nearly as scary as people say he is. Some even mistake him to be the absence of Light. It's partially true, he doesn't like her. He told me she's too boring. She's all facts. I just think he's lonely, but it was last summer tha he made his first best friend in a century. That was me.

His last best friend was Emeline Cigrand. It was a short friendship before she joined Death. Darkness was there to comfort her as she waited for Death to collect her. She sat with Darkness as she leaned against the vault door, slowly inhaling the limited supply of her life. Now she waited for the murdering graud to release her; she had written the wedding announcements as she had asked. But he would never come, while alive that is. Instead, Darkness calmed her during her last moments. Darkness showed her his paintings before giving her over to Death. She was grateful for the glimpses and appriated his work.

Now, over a 100 years later, he found me and Darkness is happy Death doesn't have his eye on me just yet.

Darkness warmed up to me fast. He was ecstatic to have good company again. Most people were afraid of him or they lift him for Death. I liked him. Darkness was fun and seemed to really like me. Eventually his art became more than just abstract phantom colors.

One night as I laid in bed, Darkness proudly showed to me for the first time a sketch. They were a pair of eyes, and beautiful. I sat up in amazement, opening my eyes. Light greeted me and I scowled before closing my eyes again. Darkness didn't show me another sketch for awhile. When Darkness finally was confident enough to show me more of his work, he would share images with me often. I loved them. They looked like Light's pictures, but there was something different about them, something special. He gave me a glimpse of a detailed man in a trench coat who was holding a gun. Another time there was a young curly haired girl riding a city bus. He loved eyes. He would show me a new pair every other every night. One time I knew that they were mine.

Each night I would wait patiently for Darkness to complete his sketch. He would allow me to see his abstract art while I laid in his presence. When he was finally done, I could feel his joy as he presented it to me. Ans as I feel asleep, he would run his fingers through my hair or draw a sketch of me. I found it so fascinating. I used to believe vision was possible because of rays but it was more than that. Light and Darkness made vision possible. Vision was images and colors, not the waves like I was taught in school. It was beautiful to understand vision and it was Darkness who taught me to see in the dark.

I lie awake in bed,

Thoughts dancing around my head.

My phone dings and dings

Notifications rolling in.

I check it once.

Twice.

Is it 2 AM already?

Doesn't matter.

Another notification.

Another thought.

3 AM, the witching hour.

No sleep for me!

I'm still getting notifications.

5 AM, my alarm has rung...

Dang it.