Slipping into sleep

Mind churning over

Thinking about the day’s events,

Unasked, unwanted…

Throwing me roughly into

Nightmares, vivid and glossy

Where the volcanic fires glow red,

As I run round the gaping crater

Pebbles falling, me tripping–

Chased, screaming

Terror overloading my system

Panic, running, not fast enough

It swoops down on me, attack–

And then, one dream – seemingly normal

Familiar scene, people the same

In looks. My father

Chopping up his own foot

With an axe… the flesh raw

Laying the slices on the piano.

I wake – real screaming

Real terror, fear and desperate panicking

Sing familiar nursery rhymes,

Sing myself to sleep

Drifting into more oddities

More dreaming…

So many, school as the subject

Sasha with her leg amputated

Me, bullied in the worst ways

Nonsensical happenings

My sister carefully cuts

Off her finger, as

I die again and again

Red and black and gruesome blood

Wake – hyperventilating

Nut wishing to return to sleep

Recurring nightmares contaminating my slumber

Can I stay awake, for

The rest of my life?

Too scared to sleep

But eventually, I must…

Submitting myself to more of this

Agonising mental torture.