Saturday 10 December 2011

Waiting for Morpheus.

In this life, you're the one place I call home
In this life, you're the feeling I belong
In this life, you're the flower and the thorn
You're everything that's fair in love and war
I am consuming song lyrics in overdrive, every arrangement better than the next. I'm scrambling to hit the repeat button so I can hear them again and memorize them by heart as I lay in the feather bed under the struggling sunrise. Soon enough the sun will disappear into the clouds and it will be time to rise and glint with a dull reflection, instead of shine. No one shines when it's cloudy, we just readjust our plans and take a moment to grab an umbrella, just in case.

But I am loathe to get up. The words, the melodies are pulling me back down into the soft folds of cool cotton, stitches neat and perfect in a row, a stark contrast to the those who sleep on into the morning, the one on my right with a smooth peaceful expression and tousled black hair, sticking up straight at the crown, sheets thrown off his shoulders. His skin is so cool sometimes I still count his heartbeats before I'll believe he's mine. He dreams of all the songs he's going to write when he's finished disengaging from the corporate business and returns to working for himself. He dreams of life without lawyers, royalties, art direction and sycophancy but there are no perfect days like that.

On my left the other one sleeps fitfully, tense. Red curls fighting order, his skin flushed and feverish, stacking his mastered skills in his dreams, watching for traps and ensuring a smile on every face. I'm one hundred percent sure every dream he has involves a perfect full performance and he'll replay the same dreams every night until he gets it right. Only you can't get it right, and there are no perfect days, just great days and not-so-great days, like those with rain or tough, heartless crowds or conflict or equipment failure at a popular attraction.

I don't sleep enough to dream anymore, I just drop off while listening to a song and wake up with words that seem to be arranged in a particularly extraordinary way, or when the music ends. Nothing startles me more than dead silence anymore.

And nothing soothes like a song.