When I Wake.

I try to sleep in
when nights like last night happen—

nights when I watch the bottomless
indigo of the night become a cool gray mist,
while labored breaths jab into my speech
as we stormily argue over something
we’ve debated a hundred times,
one of those time-weathered scripts
of which we both memorized the lines.

I try to sleep in until the sun peaks,
to wake up with its yellow
blaring into my salty cheeks and puffy eyelids.
Savage tremors from before will have settled
to a hum just underneath my skin.

There is a satisfaction I find in
putting myself together when I wake.
It’s like icing my muscles after a fight.
I enjoy the numbness,
the chill.

When I wake,
I stand tall, stonily resigned.
I tie my mass of bed-tangled locks tight
and neat, away from my pillow-creased face.

When I wake,
I like seeing your shoes gone.

When I wake,
lunacy, betrayal, and heartbreak lay motionless
in the folds of the sheets.
I gather them and stow them for next time
in the trunk at the foot of the bed.

When I wake,
my throat will be unclenched
as the floral tea trickles down it,
and the furrows on my brow will be smooth
like sand castles washed over by morning tide.

When I wake,
my movements will be slow and calculated.
The salt air will lovingly sting my wounds.
The ocean’s low roar will blanket your voice,
still lingering between my ears.

I take pride in seeing the newness of the day
against the stale—but nevertheless dizzying—storm
of the night.
Maybe, while you indulge
in the familiarity
of nights like last night,
I indulge, when I wake, in putting myself together
to prove my own strength.

Maybe, I so enjoy putting myself together
that I keep letting you tear me apart.

Relephant Read:

A Brutally Raw Insight into Social Anxiety. {Poem}

~

Author: Nicole Wong

Editor: Catherine Monkman

Photo: Mysi/Flickr