What is easier than the lay of light cloth against the pale and supple curves? Or the warmth of bare skin?
And where are the haunting fancies of pink lips? Or the dreams of breath against breath?
Where is the hellish pleading for lengthy embraces? For slow nights? Or tears for broken things?


I know rage from my fingers to my clenching throat and even the heat of it drips slowly from my inward fountain and my pulse turns cold and barren like before the rain.


I can hear wind where there is none and when I look I see a vast white wall opening like the hall of a great alabaster prison. And bright, bright and piercing.  Inside there is only absence,  the silent numb of encasement till slowly greyish shadows seep from my iris and darken in harsh, crude lines - like charcoal scraped thick over parchment. A world forms in dull hues. I am not watching. 


I can hear a voice. It is clear and palpable. It is the voice of my love. But it is my voice and my sleeping heart begins to stir - to recoil. The stillness is broken like so many falling curtains. In sudden panic I know. I know! And there is a maddening clutching attempt to lay hold, to tighten my arms around it as though it were an object.  In one great feverish moment something deep and  wounded screams in hopeful fury - I feel nothing! There is nothing! I see the horror now - the great treasures of the ages strewn before me and my greed is dead. Food but my gluttony is sated. Cool water but I am quenched. Coy calling figures but I am passionless. 


I realize that in nothing there is people. They crowd around me. Hundreds - thousands! They are laughing and talking. They are eating and drinking and sweating. There is noise now. A great blanket of voices. 
They are near me and I call out to them, but my lips are motionless. Suddenly I am waving, thrashing and jumping - grabbing clothes and beating at them, but I have not moved. I am quivering, but I am still. I am roaring like I have seen beasts roar, but I am silent. 


They are all there - here. The wise dead, the foolish youth, the families are here. She is here. Old friends are here. The greatest are here. Men with slanted hearts and soft whispery voices are watching me.  And my panic is fading, slipping from my mind. A warning mumble growing still fainter and fainter until it is a muffled buzz. An insect behind glass. 


My body is laughing. My body is weeping. My body is breathing. My body is speaking. My body is awake. 


But I have fallen to sleep.