Every night I sleep at the bottom of an ocean while all the church bells in Atlantis ring with merciless pride and clarity.

Closing my eyes, the darkness is a cocoon and I am a distant unseen galaxy with no sun.

Inevitability is a spider web on my face, the moon a hideous widow spinning knotted ropes out of dead nerves to pull the silent tide near, and I can't even tell if I'm breathing.

As I roll my eyes and strain through the ringing, bug-eyed intelligent thieves with possum faces stalk my home from the ivy and whisper directions to their depraved lupine agents with clacking teeth and faces contorted in laughter at my heavy eyelids and wring their knuckly hands in anticipation of the rewards. Neighborhood dogs bark and yank chains and rattle fences with valiance to pick up my slack for sake of a din that could raise the dead.

But not the deaf.

And I would be a dog on a chain, sleepless for the pack

And I would be a corpse in the ground, for failure in the attempt

But instead I toss for the silence and turn for the darkness, and clench my jaw with all the strength I can muster.

Because what else can I do?