Insomnia, Shay

I crawled into the space made by the pillow cover's tear
where the thread had pulled away
I pressed my face into the batting
cotton-wool against my cheek
Just a girl, not yet asleep, inside a pillow case
Where once there was a restful night
a dream of dreams to come
There left behind
in fun, in play
a tattered cloth round a tattered face
Both spent and threadbare lay
Each thread a sigh, of laughter old
Younger than today
Wound about
Creep, sprawling round for time
where I no longer lay
So, sleeping lie
The child dies
And I am left, and left behind
Inside a pillow case/ 

Insomnia- Mike F

PROMPT: Insomnia STYLE: Choose your own adventure--poems, short stories, (screen)plays, whatever you wish. LENGTH: Again, up to you! Post by Sunday morning-ish PST and if you want critiques let us know!

DISCLAIMER: I will be attempting to write this whilst in the Munich airport and aboard my flight to NYC. It might suck.



She reached under the passenger seat for a tin of mints, popped one in her mouth, and slid the tin across the dash. Neon signs flooded red and blue through the windshield and French held the keys up to the light one by one. She rocked forward and slid the key in the ignition, fired the engine up, sat back.

She would get home without Lincoln having know she had gone, drunk himself but at least able to keep his eyes shut the duration of the night. Her kids might hear her. She would play with the boys for a bit, slide cars across the floor, let them play Angry Birds while she poured a scotch. She'd tuck them back in within fifteen minutes time. Then maybe slip on some sweat pants and watch home shopping channels, muttering alone to the hyper enthusiastic shit-show of grandma jewelry and plastic cookware that was paraded out.

The drive home was uneventful. French knew the favorite spots of the cops and avoided them, though she was confident in her ability to pull off the song and dance should someone pull her over. She was getting back from a trip to see her sister upstate, she would say. A shade over forty with mom hair and tasteful makeup, she didn't fit the role of drunk or degenerate; there had been no problems flirting and “I'm sorry, officer”-ing her way out of these things in the past. She pulled to the curb a couple blocks away from home, rolled down the window, and lit up a menthol.

How long could this continue? Lincoln and she had gotten married young, shortly after the birth of their only daughter Angela. The boys came a few years later. Though they had never been rich, their life had been settling into a comfortable groove prior to Angela's accident. Lincoln's writing was getting noticed, he was publishing stories in certain national reviews, and was wrapping up his third novel though he had no publishing deal.



AAaaand probably the daughter died and the mom can't sleep. and so on.

I would have loved to have gone on and or edited but my laptop ran out of juice on the plane... then I lost interest.

Insomnia - Mischa

INSOMNIACHE

Thoughts scrape the inside of my skull like dead bodies dragged through a forest late at night. They dart like eyes in the darkness, bouncing off the walls looking for a resting place but finding nothing except infinite momentum. It’s too hot and it’s too cold, covers half-strewn across my legs and torso as I rustle restless relentlessly. Insomnia. Insomniac. Insomniache. I want to sleep but I’m wide awake. I don’t know what time it is, but it feels like 2am, 3am, 4am, 5am, yesterday, tomorrow, last night, last year. The start of the universe and the end of the world. I hear cars pass through the curtains and the window, hear you sleeping silently beside me, you rising and falling peacefully and calmly, the way it should be.

But then I wonder if you’re actually there or just a figment of my imagination, whether me being awake is just a dream, that really I’m asleep and lost deep within myself, that this reality is unreality and this unreality my life. The lines are blurred and I can no longer tell. The dreamer examines his pillow. I pinch you and you murmur something, inaudibly disgruntled, and shift your limbs slightly, edging them ever further from me and towards the edge of the bed. But there is nowhere you can go. You are on the inside edge, the side against the wall, and there is nowhere to go except to push yourself ghost-like through concrete and glass, a dead soul sliding through particles and atoms to mix with the crisp air of winter.

I get out of bed and I feel my way through particles of dark, tiptoeing as quietly as possible so you as not to wake you up, and I make my way to the kitchen. I open the fridge and bask in its cold yellow glow while I look for something to drink or eat. But there’s nothing I feel like so I close it again. I rub my arms as I walk towards the bathroom, wince as I turn its bright light on, close my eyes once the piss is flowing because I can hear my aim fine. I flush, then wash my hands and catch my face in the mirror as I do so – large, dark circles under my eyes, my skin a sallow, sickly yellow, pimples and veins decorating the surface of my flesh. I hope it’s just the light, that this is not who I am or have to be or what I have grown into, but an unfair reflection, a grotesque mirror image caricature, a replica that exists only in the parallel world of that late night/early morning mirror, but as I splash water on my face, I feel how old I’ve grown beneath my hands. I know what’s been lost.

I head back to the bedroom via the fridge again – still nothing I want, but I want something in there I know it – and then fill a glass with water and drink it so fast my teeth hurt. I refill it and head back to the bedroom. I can’t see you in the darkness. I can barely see myself. But I can feel the cold glass in my hand and I know I am here. I place the glass down on the bedside table, then take a swig, then put it down again. I sit down on the edge of the bed and the mattress sags under my weight. I lie down. I touch your arm to know that you’re still there. I hear all the words you’ve ever said to me run through my mind. I try to think of the last time I saw all the friends of mine who are dead now and remember what, unknown to us, would be our parting words. Always so much left unsaid.  

I lie back, eyes wide open and listen to the buzz of the apartment. Everything is magnified. The clock ticks louder with each second, flitting between the past and the future, my future and my past. The ebb and flow of your breath increases with each inhale and exhale. I can hear the fridge hum from the kitchen, even though I know I can’t. A car drives by outside but it sounds like it’s racing through my skull. My heart is beating loud enough for two. The hours pass and as they do I start to make out the shapes inside the room – the bed, the desk, the wardrobe, the record player, the clothes lying on the floor, books, a coat hanging from a hook, the radiator, the heaped duvet next to me, my naked feet wriggling restlessly, the bones of my toes trying to escape their prison. I watch the pale rectangle of curtain grow brighter and brighter until there is a world outside. There is a world outside and the world outside is waking up. I yawn and wish for sleep.  

Insomnia - Nicole

Insomnia

The wind shivers pretty
In the night I'd miss.
If I ever slept.

Insomnia - Alex (I had this dream...)

I wrote this when I had a bit of self-inflicted insomnia. I was afraid to go to sleep because of things I would dream. I've tweaked it a little. It's a bit of a cop out, but I've been really busy (as has everyone) and this is all I got!

I had this dream
and
I was wearing white.
My hair was long,
brown, flowing and full.
My dress was
a few sizes too big
and
I was barefoot,
inhaling chlorophyll
running through soft grass,
and glass
and broken asphalt
tasting blood.

My dress kept getting in the way
weighing me down.
It grew richer, thicker
more. It was heavy like wet pulling down
on my arms
my shoulders
pulling my thighs towards the ground
slowing me
making me retarded.
 It was all I could do to hold it up.

And I was running
and I thought it was to you,
but I was running
going nowhere
running in place while the background
blurred behind me.

i never fell.
but I tired of holding up my
big fat heavy
dress.
and then everything-
me, the ground, the dress
we all just
disappeared.

and then it was black
like at the end of a film
but there were no credits

and it was over. 

Insomia - Polly

Insomnia

It’s night sweats, and thoughts coming in waves that you can almost see crashing onto the backs of your eyelids. Like panic in slow motion, because the lights are off and the sound of silence buzzes like an almost-soothing lullaby, but not quite. Counting sheep, ice cream cones, job application rejections, sexual partners, whatever - it’s all the same thing and sometimes it works. but usually it doesn’t.  So tired you can’t sleep, as they say, so you get up and pad over to your laptop, one hand rubbing your eyes and the other outstretched and aiming at the apple symbol. the only thing glowing in the darkness.  maybe an hour or three later you’ve written five pages of slop, of drivel, with a few sentences of brilliance swirled into the mess.  When you do finally collapse into sleep, the insomnia temporarily stayed, you have something to show for it. At least there’s that.

I’m jealous.

I fall asleep on my third breath after turning out the light, and wake to the sound of my iPhone alarm, what, it can't be, I just fell asleep five minutes ago! Dead to the world, like a baby, a blanketed beached whale. I have no middle-of-the-night blabber folder saved to my desktop, and I wish I did. I wish for once I didn’t sleep clear through eight or nine hours out of every twenty-four. What a waste.

Prompt #1 -- Insomnia

Hey everyone! The first prompt is from Mischa, and is very general so we can start off easy peasy!

PROMPT: Insomnia
STYLE: Choose your own adventure--poems, short stories, (screen)plays, whatever you wish. LENGTH: Again, up to you! Post by Sunday morning-ish PST and if you want critiques let us know!

I'll get my shit together and post a list of the order for prompts in the next few days! Happy Writing my friends xx ps: don't forget to tag/label your posts with the prompt! Woop.