In the deep dark hours of the morning

It is nearly 4 AM and I have been awake all night. My yawns were so wide that I thought they would split the seams of my lips but when I lay me down to sleep they deserted me. Left me tossing and turning as the words in my mind built to a crescendo, creating and recreating the past in an effusion of painful sensory experiences as real, or more so than the original.

Tonight I could not get past them, could not escape those tiny almost inconsequential things that hide deep in my mind waiting for the perfect moment to come out and torment me. Other nights I eventually slide deep into Morpheus's arms and relive them in 3D. They imprint so deeply on my pillow that when I put my head down the next night I discover they are still there waiting for me.

I've heard it takes two years to move past emotional trauma, but not for me. Even the slightest upsets seem carved in stone somewhere in the synapses that flutter through my brain. It seems unfair that I dream of doing the things that might have saved me so long ago, now when it is too late.

The contradictions of manners and feelings create grotesque situations and I play and replay them back -- even now. Now when I know they are the past. Now when I thought I had taken away their power. Now when I realize that ghosts do exist. They just don't walk the corridors of old houses, they float down the corridors of my mind.

I think I must not be unique, that others suffer from the same thoughts, but we do not talk about them, do not give them the dignity or indignity of coming out into the open. Until I find a writer who dares to break convention.

And all the keys that were safely hidden away pop up to unlock memories that give nostalgia a bad name. And those memories steal my love of so many things, turning them into alligators whose gnashing teeth tear at my soul when I want to pluck lotus blossoms from the depths.