Nightmares

Saturday morning.
which turned into saturday afternoon
I sat motionless and silent on a bed different than my own
in a place unfamiliar but I was supposed to call it home
supposed to fill it with new memories, tuck my comfort zone around the edges of the doorframes
and trace smiles into the pillowcases while I slept.

but those smiles were hiding
suppressed by enough turmoil in my recent history
to make it feel like I had a tornado in my chest where my emotions should have been
so I sat in the eye of it, where everything was calm and I could be content with being numb.
and I learned that the center of chaos loves the sounds of vowels.
loved me when I sat and looked around with my eyes at the inner edges of the eye
breathed deep to let out a sigh
full of the times I almost said goodbye
to four different people i know
in the last two months
and I was the only reason why they didn't go.
the world came at me so fast and i just wanted to set the speed to slow
less rushing past all the beauty just outside my windows
less phone calls from people I loved who were about to be harmed by their own hands
less hurries, less worries
less times feeling like i didn't belong.

and I tried to make a home in the middle of the storm
only to realize that the second half of it had yet to hit
so I shouldn't build a home, but a bunker, or a fort
made of security blankets and pillows without smiles
because the nightmares wouldn't go away.
they would steal my composure and almost stole my sanity
I would wake up unaware of where I was
convinced that my sister had just died,
or my father and I were victims of a new plague
that someone I loved had gone missing
and I couldn't do anything about it.

My soul was screeching like a banshee, trying to get out of my chest
but I shoved it so far back in myself that it fell of the edge of my mental desk
back where it could collect dust and mingle with other things that i've lost or forgotten
like how to be myself
a multitude of life lessons
or how badly it stings when you have to say goodbye.

so it makes sense that it found a way out through my subconscious
it found a voice when I had lost mine
so that saturday morning turned afternoon
I immersed myself in spoken words
poetry from all over
and I watched video after video after video
I re learned all the lessons
I felt the pain I've been trying to hide away because goodbye isn't really goodbye, it's more of a see you later when our paths cross again
and I remembered who I am.

the edge of that tornado hit me when I felt the rhythm in the poet's voices
remembered that as a little girl, I found that rhythm
rode that beat with my arms that I thought were wings until my shoulder blades were tired of trying to reach something so out of reach
but I craned my neck to stare at the sky and imagined I was a crane
I felt that flow of words, flowing out of my head, flowing out of my pen
it is in that universal one, two, three, four
that I found a home
that I find a place to belong.
right. here.