When you fall asleep, does your soul rest, too?

I wonder if sleep is akin to the entrance into the afterworld. Where the body and soul sever. The body remains tucked into linens and sheets, while the soul enters territory unseen by humankind. The chance for adventure beyond civilzation begins in the late hours of the night. We don’t even know it.

I imagine myself cozying up in bed. I am alone with a journal and my book. The journal has a quarter of itself completed and the book is in its final pages.

I find myself reaching for the book most nights.

The book is a fictional dystopian novel made for teenagers. I read through it when I was a teenager. As I make my way through now, it feels like time travel.

My sheets wrap tighter around my legs with every page and the rippled duvet forms a steady, insulated embrace around me. I sink deeper into the ocean of my mattress and am called to drown in it.

_Take me_, I beg at the back of my mind.

But I feel the front of me halt.

I want to learn what is known. Taste visuals of my mind that bring me teenage angst and lust. Chills rush through me as I ponder what lies ahead. What sits behind the black of my eyelids? Is there nothingness? Otherworldly experiences?

Familiar checkpoints brush through my mind. My vision slowly blurs and I lose grasp of what I know.

I am jolted to reality as I reach for my livesaver of a book, drifting further from my hold as the undertow tugs at my limbs. Something inside of me cries for my mother. But even she can’t tear me away from its grasp.

There is no use in reaching as the book floats across the duvet. I am lost at sea.

When you are lost at sea, what is the solution?

Do you swim towards nothingness? Fight for survival? Come to terms with your fate?

I feel myself caught in the midst of this predicament nightly, though I hardly realize it.

My options are useless. There is no one.

I am scared. I am helpless. I am alone.

I go under.