by Julie Gawain

Created on: March 25, 2007   Last Updated: May 14, 2007

Disjointed. Alone. I hear voices; I hear talking, (in the kitchen?) but it's all an echo in my head. Laying on the couch, lumpy pillow under my head. Eyes glaze over as I stare at my hand. Maybe the lines on my palm, the calluses on my fingertips will have the answer. A blueprint to normality. (Normalcy's a word invented by a president.) Normal, normal, normal. Close my hand and lose the answer, close my hand into a fist.

He walks over to me, pulling the blanket off my face even as I try to pull it up, block the world, fade to black.

"Get up," he sternly tells me. I ignore him. Doesn't he know the blanket means I'm asleep?

I close my eyes, ears, mind. I want to scream at him to go away, but I can't (won't) utter a syllable. He walks away. The game, the game, it's in my head. I trick myself, and it tricks me back. Up is down, and all is fake, and I should've died anyway, and maybe I'm already dead...should've died in that car wreck, should've committed suicide by now. Am dead. Really. Dead and buried in the ground, embalmed and body drained of blood by that nice man who owns the funeral home. Lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry...

I shudder. Everything's off, colors not quite so bright, nearing sepia.

Insanity, (who's sane?). Without sanity, sans sane, sanity, saiety. Without.

Sleep comes and I escape from escape. Dream of life and death and everything's in Technicolor, reds like blood, whites like God.

I am home.

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