Stay up with me (is that a blush or are you just happy to see me?)

by Charlotte E. Wilde

There’s a sweet-spot in my sleeplessness, somewhere between ten too early and three too late, where I’m certain I become clairvoyant. There’s this one perfect, shivering instant hovering between a thought or remnant of a phrase where my fingers twitch in beat to the scattered dimension of my distraction and linger on towards total mindless meditation. It’s blinding, stark white like a near-death experience, reading illuminated endless future potential for action and retroactive possibilities of change. It exists, but I never find it when I’m looking just as I never have figured out how to keep it for more than the span of a blink or a sigh.

I suppose I must resign myself to yet another night of hopeful anticipation, a would-be seeker wandering well-mined moments alone. Its 3am or thereabouts but numbers cease to hold meaning past their honeymoon which blooms like a pumpkin at midnight on the dot.

So here I am, awake but day-dreaming lost, airfield circling and horse whisker kissing but wondering, wandering yesterday’s yellow brick roads. Tonight I promise not to drift if you’ll only turn back, come hold sway in my helical thoughts where the only score kept will be the one set to the grey-toned reel of our memory spool. Enjambed surrealism with inter-titles born of an Underwood– the flaws of which remain unconcealed by hindsight and such lamented imperfections can only be construed as ‘to be reviewed’ on this,​ ​our relentless quest for rose-filtered perfection.

Then it happens– two ticks ’till sweet-spot o’clock​ ​and​ ​I begin to remember how, somewhere in all that rain, I forgot the importance of sleeplessness at all. Only then does sleep look over her shoulder; grinning innocence like the dearest of fair-weather friends she kisses me blithely and wraps me warmly in her arms.

Neither will I remember the path, neither will I pursue a dream, but my fingers are now hung with rosegold nails and I never forget a kindness or a face.