In the Morning Darkness

I awake, the room is still dark, and the only sound is the soft ticking of my watch, counting down the minutes. I flip to my back and stare at the ornate ceiling, wondering how I could be awake at such an ungodly hour. I long for sleep, a rest which extends to my mind, all the while knowing that it will evade me resolutely. This is a scene which has repeated itself too often. 

To let the memory of you slip from my mind, the way water seeps through fingers, that is easy. But to chase you from my dreams - it is impossible. You have a habit of finding me when my guard is down the most, leaving me helpless to fight you. The conscious mind pretends to forget you, but the unconscious still clings to you tightly, letting you surface for air the only way it can; and so I meet with you night and night again in the realm of dreams. 

I wake every morning feeling as though I did not sleep at all. They say there is no rest for the wicked, but was I really so bad as to deserve this punishment? I emerge from those visions and I am tense, nervous, tired; the fatigue of someone who doesn't know how to fight anymore. The memory tugs at me, pulls and pushes, testing to see how much I can take, and in the darkness of the early mornings, amid the silence which presses down from every side, I must question whether they were dreams or visions, or glimpses at an alternate reality.

Please, I need to rest. Properly, not this restless state of half dream. If I dream, I want it to be of the wolves and the mountains, the bears and the rivers, the eagles and the clouds, not torturous visions of you, laughing, teasing, reminding. I can't go on seeing your face every time I close my eyes.