What Comes Back..

Please let this be a nightmare..

🌀

You are tucked up in bed,

Drained from daily-existence,

The floor rumbles,

Your butt clenches,

Fearing a catastrophic event,

The bed begins to violently shake, you

Clutch your covers wondering if

you’ve yet spiralled

into

dreams or nightmares,

You imagine the bed lifting off the ground

Flying to someplace vile and horrendous,

Don’t think about “The Exorcist”.

Don’t think about “The Exorcist!”

Now, not the bed simply vibrating,

But your body begins to seize,

First your feet and legs,

Then a trembling of your chest, arms and hands,

Suddenly, the bed ceases rattling,

You slowly stop shaking.

Silence.

Sleep.

🌀

Cloudy hypnagogic thoughts swirl of

Red-glass shoes, cackling witches and

Flying demons -

becoming more inexplicably weird,

Breaking your mind asunder.

🌀

A youthful self awakes,

Of a mind reset to 24 years prior,

Childish naivety of a sixteen year old, but

Strangely,

The body of a 40 year old intact,

Everyone has matured and evolved,

You’ve been struck with a reversion,

If only you knew the wisdom bubbling,

Beneath the surface,

Peering into tiny holes in walls,

Of long secret-corridors,

You crouch there,

Dreaming -

Where your inner-wholeness waits,

And radiates externally,

Your brightly-shining,

‘Devil may care’ -

AU-THEN-TIC-IT-Y you observe,

Of who you wish to be -

High expansive ceilings cannot contain your thoughts of the

Lofty, but admirable heights you aspire.

Integrating back into society,

Proves exceptionally challenging,

With a teenage-addled mind,

You can remember that person

of yesterdays,

and grieve them

in distant thoughts,

But, no longer them anymore,

Such summits we once created,

Only to tumble down,

Akin to the vapid, egotists,

That built the tower of Babel,

Such vertiginous heights to fall,

Destined to crumble,

Is that what happened to you?

A change orchestrated, not by one’s will,

But the broken (once formidable) walls,

Hammered by sheer cultural force,

Enabling one’s freedom of self,

Through societal-quakes and rumbles,

Better to slowly build,

From the grimy roots grumbling underneath,

Then UP,

With a little sunlight, love

And hope (again).

Like a wobbly-walk of a toddler,

You will have to learn to balance yourself,

And firmly plant your feet -

Occasionally on quiet nights as these

You miss your once ‘extraverted’ and ‘successful’ friend,

Or at least, what the world may have deemed you, albeit

A surface self that can no longer be revived,

You can still sense them in your mind’s eye,

If you listen closely you can hear them too,

This is the price one pays,

And you reply:

Be grateful my friend,

You tried to protect me,

I love you.

Slowly, what once felt strange,

Becomes your new normal,

Sixteen in heart, mind and functionality,

Yet with kindly nourishment,

From family and friends,

You grow everyday, while you

Observe that which the mirror

Does not match,

Recompense for lost years,

A Return.

***

Here is information on the “What Comes Back” challenge piece: