its been a long, long time since i've memorized your face.

every night when i close my eyes, it is you. you're like a fever that refuses to break. a plague that dwells inbetween my worn out sheets.

i remember the first time we met. you whispered violent fancies in my ear, with you hands wrapped around my neck. you told me you would make me yearn to never wake up. shackled my wrists and threw me into restless slumbers.

every morning i wish to never return to your wicked embrace. but the sun sinks below the horizon, such is an indistutable force of nature. as is sleep stealing my weary body away, returning me to your clutches.

so my heavy lids succumb to your beckoning, and i am left with you again. and no matter how much i resist, how much i plea, you dictate my nightmares once again. fill me with dread, paint me a sliver of reprive, then tear it away. again and again and once more. leaving my wounds small but raw and always lingering.

and the most damming part of it all is — that when i wake up trembling like a newborn fawn in the springtime — i can never recall your face. your lines and edges slip through my memory like water through my fingers.

and i am left with a small, deplorable, part of myself that is eager to return to you. so that i may, maybe just this once, memorize your face and never see you again.

It all started in the corner of my bedroom. The corner I would always find myself gazing at as I drifted off to sleep. It was gradual. One morning, after a particularly gruesome graveyard shift, I tumbled into bed excited for the oblivion of sleep to take me when I noticed a spot of a depthless black staining the apex of where wall met ceiling. As I stared at this speck of darkness, my very being recoiled, as if every animalistic instinct was begging me to get as far away as possible. But I was stuck. I could not move a single limb, I couldn't even blink. Sweat soaked the sheets as I began to tremble from within, as if my soul was begging to be released from its flesh and bone prison. I do not know how much time passed before I woke up. I didn't even remember falling asleep. The darkness was gone. But still, the terror remained and my whole body ached.

The second time the darkness visited, a week had passed. It was bigger, now the size of my palm. The despair I felt the first night felt minuscule compared to the paralyzing perturbation I felt in that moment. The more I was forced to look at it, the more sure I was that I could hear the distant torment of hellfire. Agonizing pleas that ripped through the fabric of the universe and condensed in that godforsaken corner of my bedroom. Sleep was no longer possible. I spent the night staring at the black hole, in its unfathomable shade of darkness. When the sun rose and daylight bled into the room, the darkness burned with it.

I quit my job. I have been suffering sleepless nights for six months now. The darkness' appearance was sporadic, each time growing bigger and more miserable. I was certain that the next time it appeared, it would swallow me whole. I tried therapy. Was prescribed antipsychotics. Nothing changed. I tried praying. Nothing changed. I tried shamans and supernatural experts, and relentlessly, nothing changed.

Tonight I am sure will be my last. The last time I was visited, the darkness was a deep gash, swallowing the entire corner of the room in its shadow. My hands grip my bathroom sink as I swallow my last pill. I cannot recognize my reflection. My complexion is pallor, my cheeks gaunt, my hair thinned and dull. And my eyes. It is as if the darkness had seeped into them, overtaking almost the entire iris. I trudge into my bedroom, looking over at the corner. Nothing but pale plaster. Sitting on my bed, I do not bother lying down. With my back against the headboard, I wait silently. As color drains from the sky and the moon blankets the night in its pale glow, I wait. The alarmclock next to my bed ticks 3:17 in the morning. Still, nothing. My eyes grow unbearably heavy, as do my limbs. I cannot not stay awake a moment longer. But as my head bobs up and down, a racking scream splits my head. I flinch, my eyes slowly trailing to the corner.

My stomach bottoms out and tears sting my eyes. The darkness is here. This time, it suffocates the entire room, my bed the only thing left untouched. Paralyzed, I wait. This is my end. It has to be. The darkness slowly begins to writhe, as if alive. Synchronized howls of infinite torment fill my head until I am sure it will split in two. My whole body trembles and I feel as if my blood is forcing its way to the surface of my skin. The wails — are those coming from me or the darkness? I cannot tell. I feel as if my body is collapsing and I can feel my lips part as the darkness wraps around my ankles. A searing, white-hot agony splits through me, and my jaw unhinges. The darkness slithers up my body, caressing my cheeks, my lips.

The darkness plunges into my open mouth and I cease to exist.

The darkness settles into my bones uncomfortably. Being a creature of death, I had belonged to the shadows for far too long. Never again will I kowtow myself to the dark, to the nothingness that follows. But despite myself, I am trembling before it. All around, the lack of light pounds into my skull until I feel as if it will crack me open and fill the empty space between my bones, weave itself through my sinew. Reclaim me as a mother would her lost child. What is a return to the dark but a homecoming for a thing such as I? I cannot bare it. I distantly feel myself begin to scream, the dark swallowing my panic whole. I cannot even hear myself, but I feel my throat go raw and a sting in my eyes. The shadows are cotton soaked in ink and it is filling my ears and soon enough my mouth will be stuffed as well. It is so thick, so heavy, I am choking on it. As the blanket of heavy dark claws down my throat, my fingernails drag bloody tracks down my throat, across my chest. Everywhere and everything is dark and empty and entirely too much. I am dying and my only comfort is at least no one is here to see it. Abysmal. Small and insignificant. My entire existence reaching an empty and lonely conclusion in the expanse of shadow. As the dense darkness fills me, I feel my very soul release a gasping shudder. The absolute loneliness, the overwhelming despair snaking itself around my patchworked soul and squeezing. Squeezing until there is nothing left. Until I am empty. A vessel of darkness abundance.

I cannot carry it alone, so I will share it with the world.