Poetic Paragraphs

Sleepless

He is sitting in front of a computer, mind blank, fingers running, and outside, the birds are singing the song of morning.

He wants to cry.

The world is soft around him, filled with the foggy dark of night that is slowly being vanquished by dawn. It had been peaceful. It had been quiet. He'd grown accustomed to the sound of his breath, in through his nose, filling his lungs with life, back out, a steady cycle. Dependable.

He'd reveled in the quiet, drowned in the silence, let the words run from his fingers, mind emptying into the computer screen as his hourglass emptied into the night.

And it had been dark, so black, shadows creeping in on him as he staved them off with the bright glow of his computer. The dark hadn't scared him. As long as it was dark, as long as it was night, filled with the sound of his breath and the click of a keyboard, it wasn't morning.

It wasn't time for the world to wake up.

It wasn't time to acknowledge he had failed.

Because once the time is up, he can't do any more. His work isn't done.

(It never seems to be.)

He'll have to admit he sank into a bathtub of homework assignments and couldn't swim. He couldn't make it. He wasn't strong enough.

But as long as the darkness cloaks the room, protecting him from the morning light, he is safe. He can sit here, away from prying eyes, churning out a badly meshed-together jumble of words.

I made these decisions, and I live with them, with regret, with hopes that will never come true.

He knows.

He knows, he lives with it, and he's dying for it.

The assignments have been drowning him since the beginning of school, classes ending with the ring of the bell while responsibilities weigh down his heart, shoulders slumping under the weight of books he doesn't want to read.

I can't do this.

He should've admitted it earlier.

He hadn't.

I can, I can if I try hard enough, if I give a little more.

He gave too much, but won't admit it, will never admit it.

The birds are happy outside and he is not.

Light begins to seep through the windows, tentative, stepping with quiet feet on silent beams. It peers through the curtains, reaching out, and he flinches back.

I just need a little more time.

His mind is blank, quiet, and he begins to realize he's spent more words than he has. He'd thought words were so cheap, and now they are gone, and he is scanning through his brain in a half-panic at six am and coming up empty handed.

His fingers keep typing, but they are writing air.

He's been sitting here for what feels like forever, the moments of a sleep-deprived night stretching with putty-like elasticity, stuffed full of frustration, just an ever-growing pile of wasted time from his life.

The birds sing louder.

He looks up and he is ashamed. The document is filled with a hopeless mess of pretentious words, sprinkled with an overabundance of adverbs and commas, trying to keep his sentences from ending just like he's trying to keep the night from slipping away.

It doesn't work. The world is waking up outside the window, birds chirping because they have slept and woken, content in their health.

I threw mine away a long time ago.

He is drowning in a torrent of words he never wanted to write, paper just a mess of adjectives and commas and words that don't quite belong, no more than he belongs in this brightening world of dawn.

I still have time. I have to have time.

But he doesn't. Not even after he's shoved his health off the table to put down his homework. His work is almost finished, but it's not, and that's what matters.

I don't care.

He will go into this new day kicking and screaming because he hasn't quite put down the old one, lay it down to sleep, let it fall from his body in the night to be renewed by the new.

It clings to his arms, to his body, fatigue gathering in a cobweb embrace that he can't shake off.

It will trail him through this day, this new day that he doesn't want, that he'd tried to reject but failed. His homework isn't done, his body isn't rested, and his mind isn't calm.

He's falling apart.

I'm okay.

He won't admit it.

There's nothing to admit.

The homework isn't done and the night is over, daylight running through the windows to greet him, and he wants nothing more than to punch them so hard that they regress back to darkness.

He can't.

He can't admit that the world has kept turning without him, and he is left behind, drowning, scared of life but even more scared of failure.

Outside, the birds keep singing the song of morning.

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(For anyone and everyone who's pulled an all-nighter. You're not alone! And after a nap, things look brighter :) I'd love it if you could vote and comment!)