The sails are tall and white, but the gusts are gone.

Sleep(less), inspired by Andy Jenkins and Albrecht Dürer. ©Ryan Schierling

I woke up from a hard sleep to the sounds of thunder-claps and sheets of rain. My curtains were billowing into the bed, and the blank book I'd been scribbling in was on the floor, my pen under a pillow. Before I'd allowed myself to drift off, I was recreating a time in my life where there was more than enough drama and longing and loss, the weight of which I didn't fully understand then. I was fictionalizing memory - trying to find a treasure map by prying up the mostly dusty floorboards in my head, one by one. Which is fine, I suppose, because sometimes the search is more important than finding what you think you're looking for.

Ultimately, I ended up wandering the house with someone else's song snippets caught in a cobweb. It's a simple, cleansing sort of thing - words fall together well, tried and true, played out a thousand times before they ever found my ears.

But after crawling out of bed, I see I've still got incompletes and fractures and crossed-outs, marginalizing my margins. I should have been out walking in the cold afternoon rain, praying to be struck by lightening.