I get up in the middle of the night to go pee.
She rolls over into another dream.
I sit in darkness and get hit with blind anxiety.
Why does it come like this, out of no sight?
It can also come when in a bright, sunshine pool.
It can arrive with good news or a stiff drink.
Yet, it always punches us when we are vulnerable.
Like me, sitting to pee in a big, echo-y house.
At first, I don't know what the fear is.
It slowly unravels to missing New York.
I remember my dream about Kendra Jean.
She and I were trading kisses somewhere.
I could smell the air, her hair, there.
It evolves into terrifying nostalgia.
Moments I will never get back.
Besides lying memories that morph the meaning of it all.
Maybe, just maybe, I am still dreaming.
I check my phone, nope.
The light of the screen reminding me I am awake.
It is 4:01am, and the popcorn ceiling gives funny little shadows.
From cars outside, driving by.
Driven by early morning commuter fools.
Who have no idea I exist and will never read this.
Do they get anxious, too?
While the car's transmission hums from 3rd to 4th gear.
I wonder if said driver of said car gets sad when he or she thinks of time.
The matter of being so self aware that smells hurt.
Because they bring you back to song and sighing smiles.
Trying to sleep is futile at this point, I know this.
So I try to think of other things, but then she rolls over and breathes in my face.
It is a good distraction from myself.
Being held is the only antidote.
It's okay, I say, to be in two places at once.
Even more if your heart can handle it; mine cannot.
Who is to say that you can't pine for the past while still lovingly exist in the current?
Fools, that's who, denying their way to work.
They are all graveyard shifts.