I had the same recurring nightmare until my late thirties. All I ever remembered was not being able to breath. Until the last time.

It started as just feelings and sensations. Warmth and love, layered with sadness and...wet. She is sobbing. Just seconds old, I can sense the pain. It devours the joy of my birth and renders me silent. I am set aside. I stay quiet and wait.

Mother dies.

The stench of death permeates the air. New life takes a back seat to this tragedy. Grief drives that night as Father covers my face with one calloused hand and circles my neck with three fingers of the other. He pushes hard. I don't fight to breathe. My 22 month old sister cries. Father starts, releases his grip and stares through me for a minute or an hour. He retreats, sobbing.

Grandmother bundles me up. Sister, too. She drops us on a doorstep. The door opens to the smell of life. Yet I still sense pain. So many babies. Loud, crying for attention. I am silent. Waiting. My sister hits me. I deserve it.

My therapist says it could be a memory.

I never had the dream again.

Loneliness, you shouldn't be feeling this as you die. Yet I lay buried beneath the earth. Memories of the people I loved dragging me towards my fate, shouting, cursing and spitting at me coursed through my thoughts. They didn't hit me. They didn't even make me bleed. I would have welcomed a fatal wound. However, killing me wasn't enough, they wanted to judge me. How dare you feel differntly to us? How dare you think your thoughts? A trail by nightmare. Put her in the box, nail in shut. Bury her. They're fingers bruised my wrists as I struggled pathetically. There was no escape. They had thrown me in, crying and begging. The hammers of nails had made my heart beat increase, I had slammed my palms against the wood, blood dripping down from my palms, staining the wood a pink tinge. I felt my coffin tip, screaming I continued to plead pity. They jeered, then stopped speaking. I felt the thunk as I was placed somewhere dark. I couldn't see much light. Sharp bangs hit the lid then. They weren't taking chances, they were burying me in stones and rocks. No way to escape. I was alone to die.

My worst nightmare speaks only in 3am;

ghost-stories it’s way into my subconscious,

and makes me uneasy in my own home.

It is the monster living under my bed,

the shadow lurking within my shadow.

The creak from beyond the hallway, when I am home alone.

But even as it creeps,

out of the closet, and onto my bed;

I do not run or scream.

In fact, I do not even blink.

Perhaps nothing is truly scary,

when you’re without a dream.

For what is a nightmare,

to a girl who never sleeps?

I thought my worst nightmare would be never seeing you again,

yet now I'm afraid of the slightest mention.

Your name strikes fear into my very soul,

making my bones rattle in a way I never thought they could.

Your voice makes my soul give into gravity and

weigh my body down,

pulling it to the ground it once came from.

The sight of you makes me freeze.

A deer in the headlights.

Yet the scariest part of all, is that I want you to hit me.

Tell me you have not feared

your sleep to ease a soul so marred.

Dreams lurking to remind in ways

you of spending sinful days,

widened eyes open in a haze.

If you chance reluctant time to bed,

next awareness are you dead?

The night is dark, the night is real,

demons of darkness never heal.

Temptation by day, fright by night

reeling sin of your souls damning plight,

only days to make time right.

A fearful dream molest your slumber,

next time asleep, hell may pull you under.