Rohit Nalluri

on sleepless nights there is
little difference
between the darkness
of the night,
of the eyes,
of the mind.
it makes no sense,
or makes too much.
the mind roams the free expanse of darkness
And returns here to the arctic dark.
ravaged, grey, stark,
it fills the vacuum of lost days
with the broken shards of strange new thoughts –
i give it a flower, it imagines a forest.
i give it a breath, it imagines a storm.
i wonder what i could give
for it to make sense.
the mind’s bizarre constructions terrify me
so i sit up in bed and let the silence seep
wondering when or if i will ever sleep,
only to understand it is not i that cannot sleep
but the night.

the night is some strange seeping liquid
coating whatever it touches
black.
it invades,
colors every gap.
it shadows everything, everywhere.
when the heavy lids of the eye
fall
upon each other and close with a
thud,
i find the darkness already here,
between the eyes and the lid.
even now, sleep is rare.
what i fall into is not sleep
but sleeplessness,
that hurried, anxious, restlessness,
that fearful world of disconnected dreams
that don’t make sense and the great fear is that they just might.
gasping, unseeing the dark mess of the mind, i
tell myself – it is not i
that cannot sleep but the night.

but on few lucky nights it is easy to fall asleep.
like when we hiked up to the edge of a snowy cliff
and waited five cold hours for the night to become darker,
for the night to age
until a pocket of the sky began to rage
and pulse
with the color
of dreams.
we sat for hours, watching rivers of light fume –
watching the aurora bloom.
and because i am human i wonder –
what must i give my mind
for it to imagine these.
it felt as if between the great eye and eye-lids of the sky we sat.
sleepless and sleep-deprived,
with the night and light we sat.
and then there it struck me,
looking at the dance of the night and light,
it is not i that cannot sleep but the night.

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