It happens like this:
(Or perhaps not, it seems to happen different for everyone)
The warm, dense fog lifts just a little
A cold tendril brushes against your cheek
From the deep recesses of
Both mind and body
There emerges a dim spark
Muffled and hidden,
But growing
In the meantime, however,
Your thoughts are incoherent
Your movements sluggish
Your hair unkempt
Vision seems to be
A thing of the past
A layer of bulletproof glass
Stands between your eyes and reality
All images are indiscernible
All shapes a faint haze
There is a mild feeling of discomfort
That doesn’t seem to disappear
It’s high and out of reach
You are a bear
Lying on its back
Batting its paws at a beehive
But missing by inches
The majority of your self
Is a gaping void
Only a dim fraction is alive
The rest is primitive
Neanderthal
You are completely reliant on instinct
Your skull is impenetrable
Your brain is nonexistent
Or perhaps
So shut off from the outside world
That it remains like a locked box
Impervious to the elements
Flung into a volcano
Eaten away at from the outside
Unretrievable, unattainable
But still intact
For now, you’ll have to fend on your own
Relying on basic impulses.
You blunder about,
Hands groping to find their way
In a blind world.
Then comes the dreaded
Noise.
It is an irritant.
A curse to your addled brain.
Aggressively, you turn to its source
And snarl at it.
It looks back at you like what you are
Monster.
Animal.
You can’t really be differentiated
From a wild beast
You retreat from the light
Fearful of what it might bring.
Soon, however
Though it seems to take
Ages
The blurs you see
Begin to take shape
Inquisitively, you lumber forward
To observe.
Dog
Is the first thing you see
In eagerness
You look around you
Look at a blurry world
That is coming into focus.
Blanket.
Bed.
Box.
The Words come easier now.
You discern other fellow
Humans
In your vicinity.
Still slurred
You attempt to speak
A few words
They respond in kind
But so much more
Sophisticated.
There’s breaks
Between words and sentences.
You, on the other hand
Are still Evolving.
Coordination.
That’s your next task.
Your brain has since
Been retrieved
From the volcano
Of sleep
But it is still
Struggling to reconnect
With your body.
You want to grab a glass
But your eyelids
Refuse to move
From their half-closed position
And your fingers
Make contact with the glass
But don’t grab it
A crash
Near your feet
Disrupts your evolutionary progress
And you are an
Animal again.
Stamping and screaming
Smelling blood
When there’s none.
Complaining with vehemence
Does nothing to solve
Your current predicament.
Slowly
Ever so slowly
The smell of blood
Goes away
Your eyelids lift themselves
Just a fraction higher
The spark inside you
Grows a little brighter.
You have the sense to
Apologize
To those around you
And your hands move
In the way you want them to
As you clean up
The mess.
By now
You are more fully Evolved
And have the sense
To ask the others
About plans for the day.
With a much
Cheerier disposition
Your family
One by one
Exits through the front door
Before you leave, however,
You check the clock
And realize
Your morning evolution
Took the whole of
Forty-five minutes.
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Photo Credit: dribbble.com
