:: NONSENSE::

It's 3am again. That heavy feeling, like my head's submerged in water... the fight to stay awake... to push... to punish myself. I sit up and stretch my bowed spine, and lean back over the keys again. It's so easy... words flow so easily through cramped fingers into the keyboard. Nothing makes much sense now though... this halting, indulgent writing, this pitiful attempt at release. The old screen shivers; it's been on much too long again. The tracking ball in the mouse wobbles erratically. The text shakes and I can't tell if it's the mouse or my eyes. I'm losing focus again.

A message blinks before me. There's warmth there... it stretches over cable wire, darting between a million other signals, redirecting and ricocheting from point to point... and somehow always reaching me instantly. You see me... you pick up on a hidden sadness within a line. You know me somehow... me... the forgotten-about-me. How can you make me feel this warm? How do you know how to enfold me without a touch, as if it were second nature to you? The smile that touches my face is so warm, my eyes lose their edge, their weariness falls away for just a moment, at the hint of you. I don't see your face in my mind. I feel your presence, as if it were with me... a silent, smiling child holding my hand. But you don't look like a child... isn't that a funny thing to say? I don't remember much from childhood. It's like a photo show in my mind's eye... still pictures of a life I'm not entirely sure was mine. I cringe from that image... a cool child born of lavenders and blues, running toward me, arms outstretched, but I can't embrace him. But somehow I believe he would burst into a thousand raindrops, laughing as they pelted the sun-warmed sidewalk... if you were to embrace him. I shudder as I imagine your embrace... to realize its distance, its impossibility. A lopsided smile plays defiantly at the hard line of my mouth. I can't help reaching out... I mentally slap away my own hand, but it keeps stretching out... to grab hold of you and pull you close. So soft, so warm, giving way under the pressure of my arms, flushing as I bury my head in the cables of your sweater, the smell of the natural fibers mingling with your own clean scent. I could fall asleep forever, huddled in the cozy warmth that surrounds you everywhere you go.

I could let go, Finally finally, forever and finally. Just collapse and fall here, Finally finally, forever in here.

And a lyric spills out... a fuzzy warm lyric that's not like me at all. I'm babbling now I think. I'm high on your fantasy. I'm high on false hope and deprivation. I smile anyway. I stare at the screen through heavy eyelids and admire my rambling before another wave of weariness crashes through my head.

Only a few hours now until daylight... until gray walls and vacant eyes. Eyes with empty adoration... so annoying. Hiding eyes under tendrils of lavender hair. Hiding stolen glances... hiding the hollow hammering in my chest every time I catch sight of you. Routine now, routine for me. Ritual to hide from you, to dart the opposite direction when you call my name. Routines break. I break and you break me. Poetry scatters all over the keyboard. It's all nonsense of course... it's getting harder to control my stiff fingers. It's all nonsense, but... maybe I'll hold onto it tonight... just until sleep finally claims me... something to drive the cold from my quaking limbs, something...