Awake. Bladder. Keep the eyes slitted to suggest to brain I’m not awake yet. Think as little as possible. Frankenstein-movement to suggest to brain still very sleepy. Pee. Back under quilt. Duvet because it’s cold now. Sleep.
I said sleep.
Wood pulp,
Dried and bleached by sleep,
Laid and stacked,
White for writing,
Dropped from a height
Cappuccino fights for us. Not acrid drip coffee, like the crow-black sludge manufactured in all-night truck stops. That muck flays your throat with writhing fingernails of hate. Plop, splash, plop it knells, as gummy chunks hit the porous floor of a Styrofoam cup, like sounds best left in the bathroom. Like an invading tyrant, it marches upon you, subduing you behind dark, dripping bars of endless night. But the king fits his guests in fuzzy robes, silken sheets, and popping fires. He speaks, his voice a shining note, as he glides from his steaming nest to rest in a porcelain carriage. He arrays himself in infinite sheets of deep browns and tans, like soft, supple leather. And tipped from his bed, he releases a thousand dancing warriors, adorned with silver swords and helms and shields, to piroutte across the stage of your mouth, fighting back knived goblins and the bloody fangs of wolves, singing all the while, before diving head first into the cave below to do battle against the coldness of wakeful nights. Only a king, not a bully, can keep those nights at bay.