24, 26, 27… The numbers on the screen kept shifting. Her mind was unyielding. Her eyes slowly turning into a cold pearls sack and she couldn’t protest it.
The sheep’s emptied the barn only to welcome the uncanny visitors to juggle her thoughts.
Sleep’s cloak never fitted her, too large, too small, to involve her. It was ever so watchful, ever so near, like an owl hovering above her but never settling, always on alarm.
Perhaps it was a divine punishment she thought, an hour for every sin.
The numbers kept shifting, 50, 51, 1 … It would be a humble death; sleep-deprived beauty, no fuss, no glory.
The scented candles itched her nose, the playlist stopped, they lied. These morbid frequency only alerted her. And just when she thought she exhausted all remedies it came to her — tea, chamomile tea. She got up and went to the dark kitchen, her eyes accustomed to the darkness and her memory marked all the corner in there she turned the kettle, and searched the cabinet for her last hope. The steam kissed her nose, her trembling hands holding the mug, she inhaled the smell again, and she was startled for a moment when hollow eyes looked back at her from the surface; her own reflection, so much for the “beauty” part she thought.
The longer she stared the wider the circle grew, it was a pond, it was a river, and it was an ocean that flood her.
She drowned in a mug of a Chamomile tea.
***
text // alaa minwer
art // reema motib