Briar Rose

The following piece was inspired by the poem Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty), by Anne Sexton. It is one of the assignments from a course I took at UU. I thought I would share this to showcase all I have learned at this university.

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Tuesday Night

The hypnosis didn’t work. The voice tried to guide me, but I remained awake and untouched. 

I wish I could go back in time for a protected and peaceful slumber, inside the columns of my mother’s womb, just floating in a sleep free from dreams. Instead, viscose and oceans of snails plague my nights. And I’m surrounded by the sea in a boat made of breath and hiccups, moved without agency. I try to fight against the current, like a salmon up the river, but without any results. 

Dad says I’ve been having these same dreams since I was little. He still holds me in the dark, cradling me and promising to guard the gates of my mind. 

But the nightmares still come.

Wednesday Night

Today, Dad took me to the hospital again. Twelve doctors in white coats were running around with scans, probes and electrified wires, but none could find an explanation for my distressed sleeping and insomnia. Dad says he chose only the best doctors to examine me, arguing that he had researched for the best somnologists in the country. But in that hospital, there was another doctor whom he had discarded. An old woman with tired eyes. From the nurses, I gathered that she was a survivor of some kind of traumatic event, and that’s why she researched sleep disorders caused by trauma. Dad was wary of letting her get near me, dismissing her on account of not being qualified to treat children since she was not able to have them herself. Eventually, they allowed her to run some tests. She said there was a change coming, that sleep would not come in drops anymore, but as a flood. Hypersomnia, she called it. Daddy was not happy. He consulted with one of his chosen doctors, who prescribed me a medication that would hopefully regulate my sleeping schedule.

Monday Night

Just a couple of hours every night. Daddy is running around like a maniac, finding a dozen new medications to prevent my predestined disease from coming. He is so worried that he sleeps on a rocking chair beside my bed, and when I finally manage to doze off, I wake up with his odor in my nostrils. He must be watching over me.

Sometime in May June?

Eighteen hours per day. Dad says I look like a zombie even when I’m awake. I cannot distinguish my dreams from reality anymore. I forgot my medication one day, and since then, I just cannot stay awake. I dream of china dogs and metal trees, all so cold and still. 

In moments of clarity, I can see hundreds of roses all over my room, Dad had sent them to keep me protected. 

First Monday of December

A doctor has been coming when I’m asleep. The roses have been removed, their odour gone too. He has found that a certain tone in his voice seems to wake me. He takes care of me every night, which helps with my awakening in the morning. But he still cannot figure out why I wake up crying for my Daddy every time. 

I know something plagues my sleep, something terrible, but I cannot quite remember it.

Last January Night

I cannot sleep anymore. I’ve grown fearful of the night. Not even Dr. Prince's presence can relax me. Conscious rest frightens me. When I close my eyes, a shepherd seems to be directing me with brutal strikes. And when I dream, I see the same tired eyes I saw at the hospital, but this time, in my own sockets, devouring every piece of raw lamb the shepherd left untouched.

???

I am tired. Immobilised as a metal bar, intubated in a hospital bed, I feel death calling for me. For a split second after waking up, I feel my bones grow old, desensitised. If this were the end, I wouldn’t come back to this unrestful existence. Only my Daddy’s touch could spring me into resurrection.

Early morning

I am awake now. Innocence was stolen from me, moved from present to past and from past to present. I was passed hand to hand like a bowl of fruit. Each night, in a nailed bed, I go back to her. Daddy? How do I restore my innocence, Daddy? I now see your sticky tentacles all over me. I’m finally at shore, out of my linen prison. If this is the afterlife, I prefer oblivion.