literature

Hypergraphia

Deviation Actions

Published: May 3, 2013

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Literature Text

i.
Night comes once again and her lashes only flutter. Her eyes do not close. She is as predictable as the cycle of the moon. Oh, come sacred Sleep! Steal through her window and bless her with a nepenthean kiss. Let her dream serenely till her mind is quiet and her limbs are loosened and let her not wake for days. However, inspiration sinks its claws in her and she awakens before she can drop her guard and surrender. The pen she clutches looks more like an extension of her gaunt hands that have no time to waste when seizing notebooks off the nightstand. Pens can never keep up with the quickness of her thoughts. When writing all day and all night she sometimes weeps about the suffering in her fingers. Arthritis might be in her future, or possibly in her present, but neither risk nor agony will stay her hand. She won’t stop, she can’t stop, albeit there is no malady crueler to threaten her with than Words and she is already acutely afflicted. They are fires in her brain, consuming and spreading like a virus. The only remedy is to write them out, but it is only temporary because her immune system can no longer fight them.

ii.
In the stark light of the morning scarcely legible lines are scrawled top to bottom on her sheets, with snatches of Blake and Poe across her pillows - and why not? The bed served no other purpose to one whose lids shut only to scratch the maddening count of minutes, similar to a prisoner who carves down the days. Nevertheless, it is as painful as the sharp tapping of her lashes fanning air and desiccating her bleak, blue eyes. Fiercely stinging from the closing scrapes of her eyelids, as chisels striking walls (if walls could feel), which set her feverish brain wondering. Furthermore, her space is swiftly filling up and her walls are already penned murals many times over. Below are layers of paint and words and words and words. She is sitting at her desk by the window with the shades drawn like her wan skin and she hasn’t eaten since god knows when. Skipping meals is common here, though it isn’t so much skipping as it is forgetting, because eating means nothing when she is writing as though she is dying. She is writing about everything and nothing, pressing hard into the paper and leaving ghostly imprints from the first page to the last. The letters flow from script to print like the tide of her moods. Her eyes were always older than she was, as though they had seen lifetimes of wonder and too many tragedies. They are warm and deep, but now empty in a way that they had never been, yet shining like madness. Her bright eyes are unsettling in a foreboding sort of way like broken mirrors flashing warped reflections in a wishing well.

iii.
Tonight she does not sleep again and it has been an eternity too long. She is naked and sobbing in the corner of her room, conscious that she is breaking badly. She knows that something deep inside of her is broken, has always been broken, and that there is no way to fuse together the miniscule pieces piercing her heart and floating in futility in her bloodstream. The curtains are drawn so as not to see the moon and all the lights are on in imitation of day. She bleakly hopes the illusion takes hold so she believes that it is morning because she cannot take another night that she is still awake while the world around her is sleeping. In her anger she had ripped papers that now litter the floors and her numerous letter-crowded notebooks from her overflowing shelves were tossed at her desk and thrown violently at her bed of dead poets and her lovely calligraphy walls. Now she screams out in pain and frustration. Her pale skin is tattooed black, and on close inspection it looks like newsprint that flexes with her wrenching sobs and every movement. An unfinished short story circles ‘round her legs; a diary on her abdomen; random thoughts on her left arm and a to-do list of sorts, things to remember that she mustn’t forget, that seemed so important in the moment, are clumsily written on her right; her favorite quotes are written on her hands and songs lyrics on her feet. There are sonnets on her breasts and poems composed carefully where there is any space left. Blank pages always mocked her like nothing else; they are there to be filled, just like emptiness. Her white-knuckled hand is still clutching her pen, which is still behind her tortured mind. Her thoughts are miles ahead and she can never catch up. No matter how fast she writes she will always be miles and miles from where she feels she wants, and where she needs to be for peace.