Closed the door behind me,
Not much room to move around,
But enough light was coming from the other side of the curtains
So that I didn’t need to turn on the light.
Not yet. Not just yet.
That would happen later,
If I was still awake.
Lord, I didn’t want to be awake later,
Or even right now,
Or tomorrow…
Later than that?
No, not even then.
Unless God had other plans, though,
I knew that I would be awake then,
Later, and even later.

Rain stains on the ceiling,
Bad job on the roof, I guess.
Rain followed the chimney
Then hit the rafters
And branched out after that,
Staining the ceiling, the walls,
And the powder that formed around the stains
Fell to the dresser top,
And I always felt bad about that.
Not much I could do about it —
Especailly now,
Not much in the way of being able to move much —
Bad legs and hips and such.

So tired of thinking,
So tired of worrying,
So tired of being tired.
All I want to do is sleep.
That is another word for hide –
If I can just shut my eyes for a bit,
Then maybe I can fall asleep,
And then I will not be here and
Awake and aware and I will escape
For just a little bit of time
Away from the Real.

God, how I hate the Real.
The Real isn’t anything like I expected it to be,
Back when I was a kid,
Thinking about and wondering about the Real.
It would have been better, I was thinking,
But then, I had no idea of how the Real
Would really be.
I didn’t have any idea at all
About the Real,
Or how it could or might be.

You would think, wouldn’t you,
That after being kicked in the teeth
And in the nuts
Enough times in the years leading to today,
That I would have understood
How the Real was going to be.

Silly me.
I thought I still had a chance.
As long as I was able to slip around
And avoid Wednesdays,
I thought I might have a chance…
But then Wednesday called in some reinforcement
In the form of a Saturday.
You see, I have no help to call on –
There is just me to hold on against the Real.
Wednesdays are fairly good at beating the shit out of me,
And now – hell, now, there are, I have learned,
Saturdays as well.

The Real has a lot to work with.
I don’t have much to work with.
The Real is a lot stronger and more cunning
Than I thought it could be.
And now I must learn to live
With a new and improved Real.
I’m just waiting for the announcement,
“But wait – there’s more!”
There is always more.
And it likes to come up
And blindside you.
And it will, and it does.
I hate the Real.

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