I felt it run through me.

It was the usual past-midnight phase that gushed through my vein. I felt it coming in like a wave. The sense of reality leaving my body, as the thoughts began to flood.

I tried to think of how the butterflies weren't so bad. Butterflies - that was how I had decided to materialize the image of my fears. Their fluttering wings moved as quickly as the thoughts that scurried in me.

I'm scared to admit that I'm afraid of butterflies. I'm scared to admit that the patterns on their wings gives me psychedelic nightmares. I'm scared that if anyone ever heard me say that butterflies only remind me of their broken wings and fragile bodies, they would call me crazy.

The butterflies that run through me have no mercy.

Swarmed within color, flutter, and flight, I am as lost as the midday wind under a dry sunny sky. I try to write the butterflies away. Desperate to grab hold and halt the tremble in my palm - stay still for a while.

But there is nothing here in my hand to clench. And as quickly as they come, like time, they are fleeting. Morning rises over the hour and I am left with this vague sting of absence.

I stare at the stains of my eyes on the right-hand sleeve of my sweater, wondering whether any of this was even real. Having tossed and turned over unwashed sheets, I imagined watching myself from afar, where the wrinkles of my blankets only remind me of broken wings a fragile body.