somebody rip my heart out, and leave me here to bleed

I go to bed with uneasy heart, unsure of what to say or how to say it, torn between love and love as I have been before, as I have ever been before. I barely tell the one goodnight, and do not tell the other, and think I crawl up the bed to another night of staring at the wall fixedly...when I fall asleep.

But...there's a difference. Oh, there's a difference.

tried to take it all away
learn her freedom
just inside a day,
and find her soul to find there fears are laid...

For I wake the next morning, throat too clogged to scream, but the scream wanting to emerge with each shaking breath. The bones and bloody flesh full-borne, the twisting in the wind, despair in my wide eyes as I cling to the bedding.

My first nightmare...in months.

gold and silver rings and stones,
dances slowly off the moon,
no one else could know, she stands alone...
sleeping dreams will reach for her,
she can not say the words they need--

It doesn't matter what I dreamt. It doesn't, in the fullness of all things what I dreamt is meaningless. It is that I dreamt. More, it is that I dreamt of horror and pain, loss and fear, eviscerated visions and torture behind my eyes.

When I have been protected--from myself, from whatever in me fosters such things to stagger into conscious light--by him.

The only thing in my life that changed...has changed again.

ocean gypsy of the moon,
the sun has made a thousand nights for you to hold...
ocean gypsy, where are you?
the shadows followed by the stars have turned to gold...
turned to gold...

I pick over the shreds of the entry I'd planned to make, another diatribe against the train wreck, and it's meaningless now, just words, empty posturing. This is real. This is the danger. Not some allegorical vision of a possible collapse.

One tells me, it's a test. One tells me it lifts when he's home. But he's not sure, yet, whether he wants it to end.

And the other says, then tell him there's no issue. We're just friends, now. Resolve things with him. I'll still be here...if there's room for me.

And there may not be, he thinks.

And I go to bed, doubts circling inside, unsure which way to turn...

--and the weapons come out and the weapons go in and the weapons do not come out again--

...and I wake, shaking. I touch hands to my face and realize I'm crying.

then she met a hollow soul,
filled him with her light and was consoled,
she was the moon and he the sun was gold...
eyes were blinded with his light...
the sun she gave reflected back the night
the moon was waning almost out of sight...

I had so hoped the nightmares were gone...

This is more than allegory. This is more than pretty broken words and the careful described anatomies of past pain. This is more than nostalgia, more than reflection.

These are the patterns I'd been accustomed to, the patterns I'd happily left behind--shadow creature, formed of nightmares and choked-back screams, all the horrors I can't remember, all the ones I can, trapped with me behind my eyes.

This is my life. Full circle stop and we're here again.

something gone within her eyes,
her fingers, lifeless, stroked the sand,
her battered soul was lost,
she was abandoned...

Was it me? Did I bring them back? I have sought my sleep before, more than once, more than a handful of times, doubting I was making the right decision, doubting my path.

But I never doubted him before...and maybe that, that, is the difference.

And I sit, shaking, feeling tender and raw and half-formed, thrust up into the light half-made, sick to my soul with what my mind does when it's set free. And it's all back again.

This won't be the last one.

I have to find a way to resolve this, now.

Because this? Could be the real train wreck.

(Lyrics taken from Blackmore's Night, their song, "Ocean Gypsy".)