Sleep in Circles

Fading in, he hadn’t known much about the ring that bound him to existence with a promise that now he hadn’t memory of following. Recalling, and Xeroxing his steps, he couldn’t trace his fall, seismic fears quaked his legs to a sprawl, he couldn’t find the energy to even crawl to the edge, and to beat the living out of death. But it was equinox onward and on. The fire fades, and his eyes polished the blackness of a viscid liquid dropping out of someone’s arm, collected in tubes that shaded rainbow-colored cups. Was it a hospital? Or was it some kind of freak-show? He couldn’t decide, so he swept himself off the street where he found himself lounging an hour later. Each moment was a thought, at every point in time. The next thought inched further toward him, as he reached for another place, and his thighs dwindled out of the rush, his barbaric arms were danglinh and touching glassed walls and crystallized window panes. He was perishing, his mind couldn’t surf thru the flood of his collusion. There came a fold in time, his shoulders tossed themselves down a flipping wall, and he landed on his blood drenched head onto a parking spot, where three strangers picked him up, and they retrieved him to the hospital bed, one of whom rich enough, to be kind and pay for his rest.

A dithering army of states corrupted his mind, made him stand up, and salute himself from behind, where there wasn’t much, but his ripped hospital gown. There wasn’t enough, to prompt him, or help him figure out the condition of his humanity, no gravity either, or balanced position, it was always a collapse and then another plummet. Soon, someone threw him to the next night with sedatives.

In the next morning, the lights were soothed by effervescent whiteness, and the emptiness between the bed and the ceiling was besotted by faded visions of journeys to Stockholm, parties by the beach, or midnights coached by the thunder of youth. His mouth opened to reveal pints of medication, and ultraviolet rivers started doing stunts in his hurting head, as he floated to bloated sleep.

A wrinkle in his awake quietness was his father, aged in warm light, warning the sign of decay in smiles, and clinging to their history with solidified salts and sublimated roses. They helloed each other, and the father received a call, to which he paid his attention, while the son bathed his upper lip with the splash of his spit-wet tongue, and he rose, arching his back to the bed and gawking the entirety of the walls decorated by silhouettes of outside based trees, and cars cruising down the coast. Patients were cursing the cranky doctors, and people were accumulating coffee in plastic cups. Out of the blue, he gazed at his father in a soft grin, while his father guzzled the orange juice placed on a tray by his bedside, and they talked about the sun, and their respective mornings.

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Watt

It's all a matter of rust and shine, to serve a distinction between to have and to have not.

62 thoughts on “Sleep in Circles”

    1. That’s 80% of the idea I set out with. The father isn’t meant to be boring. He’s a man, and he does what he does. The son has made heroic peace with that. So, they don’t bother each other. They entertain each other, as they slowly sink into themselves, and disappear.

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      1. That only makes it better; I could imagine the father as an old wise man, and the son has accepted and slowly loved him. They are nice to each other, and rather one of each others’ best companies.

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      4. Thank you so much for the kind offer you made. It means a lot and you’re totally awesome for having made it. If I do ever write an anthology or something. You’ll be the first person I’ll think of. 🙂

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  6. Fading in and fading out… of consciousness, of reality, like a kaleidoscope of life. “Was it a hospital, or was it a freak show” – personally I like to think it was both, at times overwhelmed by death and other times dazzled by rainbow tubes and almost blissful delirium.
    I love it how this ends, his son gazing upon him fondly. Despite the wildest journeys of their thoughts in this surreal situation, they focus on the sun and day to day pleasantaries. Because, that’s life, right?

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    1. That’s life all right. How we chase a finale for ourselves, but we’re not ending at all. We’re always widening with each new step, stepping a fresher front, a finer feel, timing our races, and singing Happy Birthday every year. Life can be miserable, you don’t have to be anything stranger than what you already are.

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  8. It’s strange.

    I’ve been thinking the past week about when my father was dying of cancer back in the spring of 2010.

    And I’d walk the streets of the city to go visit him in hospital.

    It’s like this poem was able to capture the thoughts and feelings I had taking me back to that time.

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