Sensation seeps back slowly through dreaming depths like somnambulant jellyfish cast adrift at the whim of a merciless tide. In aching increments, utterly imperceptible to the naked eye, tectonic shifts of consciousness happen. The massive form breaches and rolls through the embracing ocean of linen, adrift on a sea of fancy, mystically connected to a blue whale through the umbilicus of a dreaming sea.

When it seems the drifter can get no more torpid, she stirs suddenly. Limbs once quiet thrash spasmodically, flailing away at cotton waves. A blinding crust is clumsily knuckled out of weary bloodshot eyes. Lower on the face the nose detects a bit of the scent of death; while the brain processes that the mouth, is in fact, ajar.

With an abrupt flash, identity is restored. That is not the perfume of the grave , it is in fact morning breath, my morning breath. With this rude olfactory shock, sense of self awakens.

Here I am, finally, this is me. I am awake, at the crack of early to mid afternoon…