Counting Sheep

I lay on my back, awake but just barely. 

I can’t with all of my power will myself to get up yet I feel the creep of apprehension intensify as a long list of to do’s becomes a visual in my skull. 

Bone-tired, exhausted, but more likely an even more intense synonym: too much dreaming, not enough sleeping. 

They say something about how the wicked get no rest, but I only see the lack of rest for the good.

This holiday season comes upon us without asking, time reaches a speed so elevated that I waste it with despair.

The future didn’t used to feel so planned—it was a whim, two inklings rubbed together to create no more than a delicate spark. 

But imminence ensues, blood gains momentum through our veins, questions are repeated and the answers are forged.  Or forced.  Forced and forged–it will be fake unless you make it real.

Until you make it real.

But what’s all this talk about saving the Earth, as if we all don’t have enough on our plates, as if we don’t cry ourselves awake out of nightmares of living below our own expectations, or worse our parents’ expectations.  Our generation is supposed to reverse the effects of humankind on this planet because otherwise we all die?

I think a choice that is put on our shoulders as a burden is no choice at all.

So maybe we die.

If we all die together, nobody mourns.

If nobody mourns I don’t think it could feel like death. 

I lay on my back, eyes so sore I shut them, and the next thing that comes is sleep.