Sleepy Beasts

“I feel so sad”

said the two vacant voids under her eyes where rest once lived.

They clung to her as she crawled into the new year.

“I thought I’d be able to leave them behind this time.”

But the truth is,

“I’m sad, so I’ll start a gym routine?

Buy more books to read?

Take more classes?

Try to make more money?”

She’ll sink deeper into the voids that’ve been created here.

These things require effort,

effort requires energy,

energy requires fuel,

fuel needs a healthy vessel,

it starts with rest.

“How can I rest with this deep pain in my chest?...”

“It enters in through my head, and my toes, and my fingers, and it crawls up my thighs and down my arms and sneaks into my heart and makes it too heavy.”

This monstrous beast of pain needs addressing and attention,

“...but I’m too scared to look it in the eyes the way I look at my own in the mirror. I refuse to be alone with it.”

She’ll just place more and more tasks upon it in hopes of crushing it with her dreams.

But her dreams began with it so how can they destroy what created them?

Now her dreams are an illusion and the pain grows more vast.

Now she resents herself and everything she does and everyone here.

Now she’s still tired and sad and uncomfortable.

“...but I’m reaching my dreams?

How can I still feel sad?

How can this pain still be here?

Who am I doing this for?”

If she were doing for herself,

she would confront the beast that lingers in her chest.

She’d befriend it and ask where it came from and why it chose to live within her.

She would let it speak and painfully hear what it has to say.

She would give it love and let it strengthen her especially when it’s rude and mean.

She would give it room to purge and then shrivel away.

She would be stern with it.

She would tame it.

Once it chose to stop speaking for her she’d then speak for herself.

She would look in the mirror and say,

“what is it you really want?”