11 P.M.

Every night at this time,
It begins the same.
A slithering dread
Passes through me,
Chilling me, draining me of my reserve,
Pressing me against a thick, cold, marble slab.
Yet, no slab I see.
And, nearer to me, it comes.
Conviction having yielded to futility,
It is already upon me.
Time begins advancing slower, and even more slowly,
Prolonging the unstoppable agony.
It peers around, looking for more of my secrets,
But it has them all.
I am just a gnat.
And, the hour is here.

And, as hands pass by hands,
The other times and hours bypass me, too.
Except, for you.
You know where the soft spots are.
Nor, do they reminisce on the day’s deficiencies,
As you do so well during your
Nightly interrogations into my soul.
Delighting in making the little disappointments
Into painful, lifelong memories.
Kicking and hiding the missing, the bent,
And the torn puzzle pieces,
Parts of a life, the scraps of my life,
Somewhere lying on the dim and darkened floor,
Forever severed, never to be whole again.

You lie on a bridge between the twilight’s demise
And the inevitable sleep I wrestle on to, soon to confront.
Aware of the cascading schedule of events that always transpires,
Introduced with the loneliest of silences,
The subtle sound of all-alone, a music tearing at the eardrum,
A sadistic performance, a gift for ourselves.
Then, an uncomfortable sideshow,
A replays of catastrophes, concerns and cares.
Always the same as the day before,
And every other day before,
Finally draws its curtains together
And written across it is:
NOTHING EVER CHANGES.

And, when I weary and weaken with heavy eyes
You whisk me off, drunkenly, towards tomorrow.
Too weak to struggle with you anymore,
As remembering gives way to forgetting,
And, now, I see, I must reluctantly embrace you,
As I will always do, tonight,
And every other night to come,
Because, I am, after all,
The creator of you.