Out on the perimeter of my bed their eyes glow in the dark. I tried tracing the lines between them once, like staring into the starry night to read the horoscope of my horror. But they never stay still long enough to ascertain their precise formations. And besides if somebody told you they could reveal the exact moment of your death would you really want to know?
Astrologists sell you the dreams you want to have. The night sells me the promise that tomorrow is another day. But tomorrow has always been another day, until it isn’t. For weeks now I’ve been sleeping only four or five hours a night, my bed a drift-less ghost ship, the captain a cartographer of catastrophe.
I wake with the sun and the moon standing over me, the hatches of my eyes smeared with the sticky black residue of receding night terrors. They don’t realise I can hear them but I can.
The sun says, Is he dead yet? The moon answers, It’s your turn to poke him with a stick. The sun replies, I can’t believe I set myself on fire for this. The moon feels like it might cry. The moon wants to cry but it can’t remember water or what it’s even for, tear ducts as dry and dusty as a long abandoned water slide.
