I lie awake again
Caught in the thin place
Between breath and forgetting
Where the dark listens
And the ceiling waits
For me to blink first
Sleep doesn’t arrive
It claims me
A quiet hand over my eyes
A slow command
To go under
Whether I’m ready or not
And every time I surface
I return smaller
Edges smudged
Voice dimmed
A little more ghost
Than the night before
Morning lifts me
But something stays behind
In the undertow
By noon I’m a flicker
A half lit version
Of whatever I was yesterday
Night finds me unraveling
Still awake
Still thinning out
Still waiting for the moment
Sleep decides
To put me down
And when it does
I fall
Soft
Silent
Vanishing through myself
One dream at a time