Three in the morning

At three in the morning I'm stripped naked and I can't pretend. Whatever is, is. Whoever I love, I love. The screaming of outside noise recedes and I hear my heart. And this grief that I have been labouring under for the past year or so, I feel it. The sheer weight of it. And I can't pretend. No I can't. Not at three in the morning. Which is why I prefer to be asleep by this time.

But sometimes I'm not and something cuts me right open and everything pours out like sludge, like fuel, like the oil that leaks into pristine oceans killing all that beautiful marine life. But when I keep it inside for too long, it kills me, slows me down, when I keep it inside too long, it's like I'm moving slow, so slow, as if through amniotic acid. When I keep inside too long, I feel nothing, I forget how to feel.

And this is the hour, the moment of truth, always the moment of truth, when everything slips into something else...in sleep, we go deep. Awake, well, the mask slips and there we are, scars and all, ugly, horrifying, but real. So real.

I am weary of all these masks. No I'm not that tough, in fact not tough at all.

Can I stop pretending now?