Four

Four in the morning.  Why do they call this morning?  It is demonstrably not so. So I lie in bed , not-dreaming nightmares that live most fully before the true dawn, strangely doubtful that mere light can succeed against them. One of these lives is a dream, one a lie, and in the dark, the dark of four, I cannot see which is which. Why are tears so easy, so heartless, at four? Why am I afraid? How has everything I know become so unknown? What lives seems gone and what is gone revisits the world in spectral form, swimming on the thinnest veneer of waters, waters from above, waters from below, waters not seen but only heard, waters which, though thin, are much deeper than I.  Waters like sand, waters like claws, cold waters that capture and pull and drag, that strangle and freeze, that erect one tomb upon another and that send their captive shades to walk the earth again – in my room, in this house, on this island which awaits the sun, at four in the morning, before the light comes.