the feeling

What was the word that she'd wanted to speak? She’s thinking thinking waiting for it to come back, but it does not, and now it won’t ever.

Do you know the feeling? Of when you are so so tired, you have not slept in days, and you’re sitting trying to stay with them all around you but your eyes keep shutting closed and then opening again with a jerk of your body. But when they are closed you still hear all the things around you but all the things morph and shift and become something else in your head, in the awake dreams of your awake asleep state.

Do you know the feeling? She keeps nodding her head, lolling back and forth, and she’s scared to go home and scared to stay here because what if she falls asleep and something terrible happens.

Do you know the feeling? Something terrible is about to happen. You know it. You feel it in the little goosebumps of your skin, the ones that haven’t risen yet but will. There is a shadow emerging from the closet. Your muscles are tense, hurting. Someone is knocking on the door but they do not come in. What is this. Something is inside you all around you black and oozing from your nose mouth eyes ears.

Do you know the feeling?

Fucking tell me if you do. Do you know it? Have you lived? Tell me how to survive it.

I’m not going to survive it.