in the midnight hour

"Sometimes I have this dream," the young man in the wheelchair said. His voice had a strange echo to it, as if it were rising up from the bottom of a cavernous hole. "There's a sharp knife stabbed into the soft part of my head, where the memories lie. It's stuck deep down inside. It doesn't hurt or weigh me down - it's just stuck there. And I'm standing off to one side, looking at this like it's happening to someone else. I want someone to pull the knife out, but no one knows it's stuck inside my head. I think about yanking it out myself, but I can't reach my hands inside my head. It's the strangest thing. I can stab myself, but I can't reach the knife to pull it out. And then everything starts to disappear. I start to fade away, too. Only the knife is always there - to the very end. Like the bone of some prehistoric animal on the beach. That's the kind of dream I have," he said.
-- Hunting Knife; Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman


I could come to the end of my life unsaved, still screaming in the dark, afraid.