Tell me how you sleep. I want to know the fleeting thoughts in the final seconds of consciousness that lull you toward dreams. Do you remember your dreams and if so, are they in full color? Do they start fresh every night or recur over and over like a well-loved movie? Do they tell you truths you are too afraid to name in light of day, or are they nonsensical abstractions, easily ignored as absurdity?
Do you sleep alone? How many nights do you curl your body around the sleeping shape of a lover and how many nights do they find refuge instead in their own quiet beds? Do you sleep better with them there, or does their presence leave you restless, body sore from pushing against an unfamiliar form?
Do you wake with the light or do you sleep until dawn is an unrecognizable face in the heat of the midmorning sun? Do you love the darkness from the end of one day, or do you love it from the quiet beginnings of a new?
Tell me how you sleep. Do you snore or speak or thrash? Do you call out in the night against unseen demons you have trapped somewhere inside your mind? Do you lay still or do your legs twitch like a puppy dreaming of running?
Do you sleep naked? Do you find comfort in the weight of a heavy blanket, even in the oppressive heat of summer? I want to know the scent of you pressed into the sheets like a flower dried between the pages of books. I would be the words that soak in the scent so that, when they are spoken, they carry the remanence of your essence.
I want to know the way that you sleep when you sleep deeply, comfortably, safely, and how you move through the space if you wake up in the night to pee. I want to know if you are the kind of person who can will themselves back to sleep or if there is a threshold of light or rest that, once crossed, cannot be overcome. Do you ever fall asleep on the couch? If you do, and you wake up to the quiet hours of the night, do you stay put or stumble your way into a bed?
Do you sleep differently after sex? Have you ever watched the face of someone stretching toward waking with your fingers on their skin? Have you ever woken to the edge of orgasm?
Do you wake violently or slowly? Have you ever dreamed of falling and, if so, have you ever hit the ground? Have you ever woken to see the body beside you and realized you were already falling before you ever closed your eyes?
Tell me how you sleep. I want to know the sounds you make when nightmares plague and the way to wake you without causing distress. I want to know the ways you curl and move and shift, the ways you cling to dreams or embrace the light of a new day. Tell me about the galaxies erupting in your dreams, the places you travel, the foreign rules that govern the worlds you see- if you remember them- or the resonate sense of awe upon waking if you don’t.
Tell me how you sleep, and whether these things I see are unique to me, the phenomenon of changing reality through seeing, or whether these things are true regardless, unchanging objectives unaltered by whether I am sleeping beside you.
Monomaniacism 