i don’t know when i fell asleep last night. actually, i don’t even know if i fell asleep at all. i stopped looking at the clock around midnight, right after i downed a shot of nyquil. then i just set myself down on the couch and listened to the clock kill each second with a halting tick, one after another; an endless slaughter of time.

since then, i’ve been stuck in the waiting room–too awake to sleep, too tired to be awake.

the insomnia distance of everything, a copy of a copy of a copy. you can’t touch anything and nothing can touch you. (Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club).

if today were saturday, i’d be alright with this fog, this haze that feels like percocet wrapped up in zig-zag and inhaled from the very bottom of my diaphragm. it’s sort of that good. like the whole world has slowed down for me, waiting for me to take my next step. that illusion. yes, illusion, because when the high wears off i’ll have forgotten the important things like feeding my friend’s fish, and i’ll have just an instant to sidestep the world plowing towards me at NASCAR speed.

that is, if i ever wake up. or go to sleep. whatever.

it’s not saturday, though, and i had to use another sick day. i should be trying to sleep, trying to get to work for the afternoon, but this process of d i s a m b i g u a t i o n is alright with me right now. they’re pruning the bushes outside my front door and it’s getting a little hot inside 11H, so it’s all noise and sweat, but my head’s swimming in a halo of immunity. i won’t sleep, but daylight’s got nothing on this numbness. i may as well be swimming in poppies.

what to do when the doctor calls back with some sort of salvation? i probably shouldn’t be driving. not even to the pharmacy. i drove to get coffee this morning. how’s that for irony? but i probably shouldn’t have. driven, that is. the coffee is a moot point by now.

i read that Sonata can cause sleep-driving. what’s an acceptable risk?

i’m disintegrating. dissolving. (i’m sure you noticed.) time to collapse into the fat of the big purple couch and watch bad but free on-demand movies through the haze. don’t worry–i’ve hidden the keys from myself.