Swallow Me Whole
A soft thrumming vibrates inside my head. It’s like waves crashing over me again and again while I’m pulled in and out of consciousness. The water within rises and falls, pushing harder on my mind with the work of the tide.
As I lie on my back, the sensation of drowning expands from the crown of my head, down my neck, and through my back before finally settling into my stomach as it presses deep into my chest. My breath wavers as I struggle to maintain a steady pace of in, out, in, out. My legs are numb, completely crushed under the oceanic waters eroding my soul.
My hands keep their strength. They run through my hair over and over and over. They pull at the roots, tugging with slight force—pain is all I can feel right now. Everything else is just a hollow nothingness that grabs my eyelids and pulls them downward but never completely shut. I can’t sleep, for beneath the compressing waves lie thousands of small thoughts playing in a loop in rapid succession.
Images of mistakes I’ve made in the distant past, the recent past and arguments that rip me in two flash like a thousand movies at once. I see things that never have been and things that I wish never were. My body sinks deeper into the bed but my mind crawls across the walls, gripping at anything it touches. I’m exhausted but I cannot rest.
The lights in my room are still on, yet there’s this darkness in the corners of my eyes. It flickers briefly, threatening to rush me into a restless sleep. My hands push into my eyelids, the lingering pain my only manner of feeling. I see spots and flashes and my head throbs as the ocean inside me slams into my skull.
I’m silent as the darkness grows like a blanket on my weighted body.
Soon it swallows me whole, and the waves pull me under into the deep.
*** This work is the intellectual property of Melyn McHenry, all rights reserved to M.C.HENRY LLC ***
