A hand on your wrist
draws you from your dreaming,
pulling your mind from
its place on the floor where you wander
because everything looks different,
taller and intimidating.

Cool fingers slide down your throat,
creeping their way to your pulse--
not the one that measures life, the other--
the one you can feel now,

boiling up from beneath your belly,
from the deepest, darkest part of you,
the part you hide.
And it makes you think of fish,
the shiny ones, slipping and slinking
through water.

It is here that you feel empty,
like the smoke you exhale
or like the orange-glow cigarette
hanging from your fingertips,
a cancerous worry-stone.