A percentage of perchance

I am fascinated by sleep. How it breathes, how it rhymes, how it reasons, how it tastes. The momentary lapses it takes in the spaces between each breath. You have taught me this and that and so much else. And all under the same moon, too.

Somewhere at the other end of how long is a piece of string, I have been exploring how sleep looks. I have a revelation to announce. It does not look like closed eyes, despite appearances round here that give lie to that fact. No, it looks like dust crystals - sand from the surface of another planet - gently raised from the corners of my face. I have always been curious as to what my soul looks like, what everyone’s souls look like, but now I think I am even more curious to know what your sleep looks like. Especially yours.

Send me your sleep. Don’t send me to sleep. No. Send me your sleep.

I shall unwrap the package you have carefully wrapped in tissue paper, lower my analytical gaze to the same level as the desk, and examine. Rapt. There has to be a secret in those two small crystals, each one peeled and lifted gently from the detritus of your eyes come morning, come waking, with all the exactitude of a forensic examination. I am thinking, indeed hoping, that it will guide me down the corridors and open all those locked doors the handles of which I’ve been testing in vain for some months now, in the dead of your night. Can your sleep crystals tell me even more than the sound of your slumbering breaths has so far revealed?

Slip. Time. When it arrives. It’s here. Time. Slip. When it leaves. It’s gone. Slipping. Into. Time. Late when it’s early. Early when it’s late. Hours. Clocks. Forty-seven minutes past the hour. Whose hour? Yours or mine? Seventeen. Forty-seven. Numbers. Alarm. Beep. Beep. Sleep. Sleep. Slip. Slip with me. Sleep with me. Why it lingers and why it does what it why and wherefore and how so and is it and could it and no I don’t want to slip under am slipping but we haven’t yet no we haven’t because I slept and you slept and they slept and half a world slept while I should have been awake should must if and should and must and must you must sleep I must sleep but want to wake want to snooze want to be want what’s right and what’s wrong want everything and nothing and sleep sleep sleep count sheep count sheep crystals sleep crystals breathing breathing breathing breathe in and out and in and out and in and out and on and on and so.

It’s here. It’s time.

I am fascinated by sleep. So much so that, right now, I want to sleep forever in the same breath, the same heartbeat and the same instant as I never want to sleep again.

Send me the crystals that you dream on. Recorded delivery. It will be easier than mailing your pillow, after all.