*verdad

I’ve been (trying) sleeping with a cloud above (and under and beside and at the bottom of) my bed.

These are the days I force myself to sleep just as the roosters cackle their good mornings. The nights before are spent awake in a palpable mirage of red, yellow and blue on a telly’s screen. Nothing really is to be seen. I skip and stop and flip through channels that only underline the thoughts of a bedridden insomniac. My body settles with disconnected strings of lethargic cries for help. I think of you.

Somewhere behind those cotton candy clouds and rays of spotted sunshine, I swim with the breeze and hope I resurface with the sight of your feet in the sand. Rewind. These are the days I force myself to sleep. I willingly (weakly) refuse to a speeding army of bullets through my sternum lest they leave their shells in there forever. But you held your loaded pistol and aimed. Do not ask me to say my last words because I’ve seen it scraped and battered in movie scenes. Let me dance to the rhythm of the wind and waving branches. I told you, I have a love affair with the world. The universe roots for my existence. Yet to be is not to be without you. But again, like incompatible jigsaw pieces, you are not to be with me. Oh Shakespeare, for the love of letters and sonnets of defeat why must you let me drown in an apathetic air?

I shift to my side, I find my position. I feel the blood rushing through the veins in my eyes. They tell me to hush now and rest my sight. But I don’t close my eyes because there’s too much color in darkness. Out the corroding white window, I peer at the darker sky, the moon is bruised and the stars are hiding behind those clouds. Theirs is a refuge I want to call mine. I reveled on the thought that you were the only thing I had. Or were you everything I had?

Feathered pillows travel across my body where yours used to be. Let me take a deep breath for I can still smell the musky fragrance on your skin. I rub my feet against each other like two rocks to start a fire. They barely create friction.

I feared this moment would come, when you’d finally rest your finger on that trigger and pull. But I love despite fear. So then, shoot me.

I turn the telly off and the colors are reduced to black. I lie still and awake. I cannot see the ceiling. The clouds above my bed are painting pictures of white and blue. “Hello Mr. Cumulus, tell me what is to come. Tell me what it is you are preparing me for. I wake and sleep with the sight of you. Tell me now. Tell me tomorrow. Tell me everyday.”

I sleep as the sun awakes and splatters colors into the sky. I sleep.