nocturn

It’s hard to remember the true taste of it, afterwards. The fear is still there. A disquiet memory of being utterly caught up in the unrelenting crush of a thing neither tangible nor even fully definite. A hint of the deep pressure over the sternum, stealing breath. Dark curtains threatening the corners of vision. A welling up, a gasp, a loss of air and of hope. But the intensity of the unrelenting pile of moments are lost in the morning. The seconds, and minutes, and hours where relief refused to present itself, where avenues of escape usually followed were walled, boarded up, nailed definitively shut. The unspeakable images of deep and abiding despair grow in frequency and intensity. But in the morning there is only the whisper of the demons fleeing into the shadows cast by dawn, their grip relinquished but their long fingerling imprints still burn on skin, a grip around the arm, tendrils still reaching out from the dark edges of the morning, grasping.