The Hour Before Waking

The hour before waking I am drowning. Alone and unprotected, the edges of my psyche emerge to have their say.

In that place I am porous.

Porous to the heavy silence of the old house around me, to the flashes of malice bubbling just below their eyes, Porous to the part of me which remains damnable, to an intense awareness of hanging in the balance before a God I cannot control. In that place I am revealed as a shaking child hiding in a grown man’s skin.

The hour before waking I am drowning in a pagan unknowing; the outer darkness where nothing is certain and faces change before they can take shape in the mind of the seer… until day finally breaks and chaos is forced to vomit me onto dry earth.

From unknown depths I am sprung onto something particular, textural, layered, intelligible, receptive, alive. Something which exists independent of me, something which holds the weight of my sorrows by the benign sovereignty of its nature.

In the heat by which all things live, the hall of mirrors which had enclosed me forever in on myself begin peeling away and becoming windows; as the world becomes swallowed in a rich, expectant hope.

Night will return, and by it; many things will be endured. Though in it’s innermost confidence; it trembles, for no tragedy concocted by the night can stop the blaze that is coming.

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“In a dream, in a vision of the night, When deep sleep falleth upon men, In slumberings upon the bed; Then he openeth the ears of men, And sealeth their instruction.” -Job 33:15-16