Sleep writing

Sleep, sleep I couldn't sleep tonight,
Not for all the jewels in the crown.

So sang Eliza Dolittle. I wish I could do a little of that. Not sleep I mean. Usually. I mean, the norm is, to sit on your desk writing way past midnight if you are good friends with insomnia or you are a damn good writer. I can barely keep my eyes open now and I can barely write. Yet I am wishing on the outskirts of my sanity that time would stay still for bit and words would lend a hand to my madness during that uncanny pause in reality.

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I feel like I am breathing on borrowed time. Time that I need to beg, borrow, steal from someone else. I do not know how this happened. I used to breathe my own air supply once. Now I feel I am constantly breathing down someones neck.

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I have developed a sudden craving for noise. Any noise. All noise. In an hopeless attempt to drown a silence I feel growing inside. I walk through busy streets, meander my way through the world, earn a living and yet... nothing. Nothing registers. There is no sound, no colour, no pain, no heat, no cold, no air, no land, no people.

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Today, I stood at the confluence of two rivers. Mesmerizing. I wish I could lose myself in someone like that - the way one river loses itself into another. After a point one cannot tell which is which. So I stood there and I yearned. No, the rivers did not ask me to get a grip on it and move on. The yearning did.

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Even the rain hits a transparent glass cage around me and slides off. A cage I forged out of the sandstorms I passed through and fires I burned in. And as I stumble through the world in this awkward looking invisible space suit, attracting the mockery of the mob around, I constantly search for that one eye that will see the cage and open it. For I cannot open it. I cannot even touch it nor touch anything outside. The only consolation being that it protects me - preserves me - forever. But you know what? I'd give up forever to touch you.

And I don't want the world to see me
Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything is made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am.

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This is a poem I started writing -

Just write,
Write like nobody is reading,
Write because the cat will not stop mewing unless you do,
Or because the cheese will not melt on your pizza.

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This was a story I left unfinished -

"I want to come over. Now. This instant."

She listened to the message on her answering machine one more time. The cool breeze from outside sneaked in through the open window. She could feel its caress in the ruffled fabric of her sari. She lay there on her four poster bed, alone in her bedroom, wrapped in her bronze chiffon and his voice.

Her cellphone rang. She hesitated. The resonant ringing beckoned, growing more and more irresistible with each ring.

"Hi"
"Tell me you do not want me to come over."

"I... "
"The drive does not take long."

She removed the strands of her hair covering her face. His hands had been soft, she remembered. Her hair still had his smell trapped in their locks.

"The dinner was nice."
"I was a fool to let you go after it. Tell me I was."

He was brash and young. He would eat out of her hand, if only she offered it.

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My quilt has been leaking wispy feathery shards for a long time now. I sewed one seam and another popped open somewhere else. So I stopped sewing some time ago. The quilt keeps me warm though and does not complain about my laziness. I hope my life is as benign. For I do not have the threads to sew it back. I do not have the time. And I do not have the sanity.