Parasite

I don’t wake in the middle of the night

breaking into cold sweats and hot flashes,

wondering if I’ve been misconstrued

by faces I can and can’t recall.

To be or not to be

isn’t quite the question,

and even if it were

I’d rather be than not.

What keeps me wide awake,

long after fatigue has kissed my eyelashes goodnight,

is the singular thought:

have I ever truly understood myself,

or am I still a shadow

caught between the fading horizon of who I am

and the faint mirage of who I wish I could be?

To have lived in yourself

having not known you

feels too selfishly succulent,

almost as if

I am my own parasite.

And when I finally close my eyes,

I wonder if I’ll dream at all

or if the parasite will wake first,

tearing through the self I never knew I had

and feast on every unclaimed heartbeat

until only the echo of me remains.

Or maybe, the parasite is all there has been

and this is all just a fever dream 

of hopes long gone, burnt and cremated

and I'm nothing more than a dead man's debt.