Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered

03:45; three quarters of the way through, what I've been told, is the bewitching hour, and it's darker than usual in here. Except of course, for the yellow glow emanating from the street lamp outside that is sneaking through the closed blinds of my bedroom. With each subtle, yet clumsy move of my head, the light dances, flicks, and pierces my half opened eyes through the gaps in the aluminum, cutting straight through my night-vision like a welding flash; it is nearly blinding.

I dream awake.

Fifteen minutes remain, and as the ghosts dance about the land of the living, doing their ghostly deeds, I have been reluctantly plucked from my recurrent hibernation (where I am hidden away from such ghosts... on a different plane) out of the in between... in between alive, and.... not so much, and placed into another, different, in between... in between sleep and wake, with a brain that is, also, in between... useful, and useless... on, and off.... under my control, and also, no so much.

I sleep awake.

My brain, as if possessed, or stubborn, continues its story, without paying reverence to the welding-flashes in my eye, the beating of the air from the fan as it smashes against my bare back, or the plain fact that I am now awake, at least in the sense that I see, smell, feel, walk and talk. I test it; "I am awake." Still, the grey matter continues without the slightest of hesitations, the disc is scratch free, there will be no skips, freezes or stopping here. The movie, unrelenting, plays on. If only this were the one with that girl from 40 days and 40 nights.... or that mystery girl who joins me every so often, and seems to be perfect in every single way. Instead, it had to be this.

I wake to dreams.

Is it the ghosts, in their last unencumbered fifteen minutes of the day, that haunt me and possess my synapses? It couldn't be, for ghouls of the in between, in my new, forced in between, would be unknown to me, unrecognizable. Yet, I know these faces. I know these scenarios. These came from my life... came from my day, my yesterday... my in.... forget the between. These were real. Why is my conscious spilling into my somewhat conscious, and, why must I still be unable to stop the disc from spinning as my feet hit the wood floor of my kitchen.

I walk to dream's beat.

The slap of my feet as they hit the cold oak serves to bring me to reality, at least it should. The scenes continue, though I've left them at work, and let it all go, my mind, apparently, has not.

I worry in dreams.

Did you do right? Did you do wrong? Can you let it go? Can you live with your mistakes? How did you simply punch the clock and leave? How are you still smiling? These are all questions chirped to me relentlessly, by some cricket with a top hat and cane. Day, night, dreams, sleep, awake, alone, surrounded and all the imaginable in betweens, he chirps. At least, I hope it's him, and not the recently departed... who've left this world too early on because of me and my mistakes, and have thusly decided to spend their least captive hour with me, in my extra dark and ominous apartment, reminding me of our fateful encounter.

I hold on to it all.

Our Knot

We are a tangled mess of Christmas lights.

One that, once, was placed with care, adorning snow capped trees, radiating a gentle golden-white glow that served to bring joy to those lucky enough to stroll by.

Instead, we now sit cold and dark in a snarl that only serves to frustrate.

To remember us as that soft glow, illuminating those around us - trees, streets and people alike - would be to forget the other 48 or 49 weeks of the year when we sat, twirled up in a box, tucked away in a cold, dark and musty attic, where our knots tightened and our bulbs cracked. Neither of us retain the patience to fix each bulb, one by one, or unbind what was bound.

Though our ensnared wires have become familiar, if not comfortable, we are of no good to each other or to those around us as we exist now.

Instead, perhaps it's best to simply buy a new strand
of lights.