Waiting

Last night I woke at 2am with the frustration and irritation that I’ve been hoping to leave behind. My eyes didn’t flutter open to be greeted by daylight as they had the previous mornings. They were wide, searching the corners of the dark, as though danger were near.

I sighed.

I remember that much.

I knew that if I didn’t do something, at least try to distract myself, I’d be caught up in the kind of anxiety that takes its hold in the early hours – the kind that is harder to distance yourself from because it sinks itself into your sleeplessness and calls it home. It’s mocking, taunting, waiting for you to fight back.

I struggled at first. I allowed arguments to cloud my thoughts, to enter a sway of acceptance and resistance. In the end, I remembered to know my battles: which were to be fought, which were to be surrendered, and which were to be reminded that their existence is imaginary.

Soon I was reading other’s words, I was placing myself in my present and in your pasts, your moments, your writing.

An attention seeking kitten found that one of my hands was not occupied with a screen and pushed his face against it, before slinking off and beneath my fiancé’s arm, where he remained for two hours more. His face nuzzled against him for warmth.

I waited for morning. I wrote shitty poetry.

I found that it’s hard to write the words of the sun when my head is clouded with thunderstorms.

That’s okay though, because we can’t appreciate the sun without the storms (or however the saying goes), and I appreciate the storms all the more for how they light up the night. How lightning sparks through an ill-tempered sky and steals the show from the stars. We’re told that we’re all stars, but there’s something just as beautiful in being a storm.

 

 

but there’s nothing to do
other than stare at a wall
whose presence is there in the light
only to be missing tonight

I have tried summon a dream
yet not even nightmares dare take
a stage littered with autumn
when winter the season should make

Instead carefree and sleepless
with shadows my playthings
breath of the dreamer beside me
becomes orchestra for fallen king

I dream with eyes open
a battle in mind
as warrior lies dying
his country left behind

A weakening grasp on golden hair
that lays plaited against plate
“my queen you betray me?”
he begs the sealer of his fate

No expression is seen
behind knights mask
but words slither forth
tapered with year longs quelled wrath

“Forsaken our moonlight
and gods of our past
as tide turned upon tide
as man did upon man

and the heather of meadows
under the grace of goddess
once wild and green
now wilts above graves

that lie barren and lonely
stripped of mourners markers
and blessings to ancients
forgotten, left wasted by wayward king

whose worship is reflected
within the blade of a sword
that alike blade of this grass
now glistens red with his pride

but where you forget we remember
and the goddess
she listens
she waits

for where you sacrifice men
I spill the blood of a king
your queen I am not
it is to this land I am wed”

 

 

and then something something and I fell asleep.

 

Hope you’re all well and having/had a wonderful Friday! Any exciting plans this weekend?

Arbie x