Sleeping is much safer than the nightmare I’m living. When I sleep I feel nothing and I do nothing and I see nothing and nothing matters and no one cares. There’s no one to hurt or disappoint or notice when I’m low and I don’t need to face anyone not anyone in the world or not even myself.

It is not the darkness of shadows: one that follows you, haunts you, terrifies you. Instead, it consumes you, becomes you, weighs you down. It IS you. It is comforting. Familiar. I have walked with it. Eaten with it. Loved with it. Smiled with it. Yet I feel it destroying me.Like cancer.But I can’t remove it. It stays inside of me, taunting me to kill it, myself, but it does not realize that this seduction keeps me alive.

Who am I fooling? Bad dreams never end. We just pretend they aren’t there.

She can’t worry. She can’t ‘fix.’ She can’t love.

Can you revive wilted tulips?

As I accept the flowers, I release my grip on the balloons, and they bounce gently against the ceiling the way they did before—hovering, annoyed, frustrated, contained by the ceiling and disappointed by the limits of life.