tachycardia
01.08.2025
I scream sob at 04:44 in the morning, my tachycardia holding my consciousness hostage from sleep. I beg my heart to let me rest. It decides, instead, to get a running start— racing back to replay memories that have degraded in quality like an overplayed VHS. They are so much blurrier, now, scenes skipping, faces fuzzed with grain.
“Just let me fucking sleep,” I wail, my cats looking up at me from where they still sit on the end of the bed. My noise is stealing sleep from them, too. “I’m so tired… please,” I crack, quieter as I run out of breath— only to subsequently swallow another whole, hitching the whole way up.
Who am I begging?
Is my heart the twist villain of this story? The one whose side I take again and again in a bid for love that has only betrayed me?
Have I let my heart demonize my mind as cold, callous?
Is it my mind that is the terrified child, cowering from a heart that races back to fantasy, a heart that holds the present and still drops it without hesitation for a rerun. Does my heart hold my mind hostage, dragging its hand at a sprint, much too fast a pace to keep up with? Thundering in my chest and grabbing hold of every organ, giving my brain no choice but to compensate and come up with a reason for the fight or flight?
44 minutes later, at 05:28, I crawl back into bed, my heart only sedated to a walking pace after smoking two joints. my fingers numb, I can feel my own body heat still on the blanket, and for a moment, almost cry again, wishing that it was someone else.
Instead, I turn my phone off and go to bed. I might still get 3 more hours of sleep.