In which I need a cat nap

Consciousness hits the tar. The pitch layers catch hold and drag it down, ignoring its floundering mammoth cry.

I’ve got lines of concrete channelling through my face – temple to brow to nose to cheek. Those lines must have been laid in the night, crystals forming come morning.

Gravity got turned up last night. It wants me to ram my head against whatever ground lies beneath my feet, press myself into the dirt until concrete meets concrete.

There is no world outside the gritty throb that laps and overlaps from scalp to chin, bleaching all sound into a vacant whine. 

My eyeballs are first to turn inward, burrowing into the meat of my brain. My brow threatens to collapse behind them, pulled toward the sucking black core that yearns to subsume my entirety.

Today, I might just let it.