I did things, unspeakable things, and I was held accountable

I was a cipher. On a lazy Sunday 

afternoon I sat, book in hand, 

closed my eyes for a moment. 

Decades passed. 

The whole world gone dark. 

It was like that for me. 

People said, later, that I did things, 

unspeakable things, 

and I was held accountable. 

As I should have been. 

What I can remember now 

returns only in dull flashes, 

gray and amber; fragments 

of a story: a long, white, trailing 

gown; the windows in all 

of the crooked houses ajar; 

black buildings leaning madly 

into one another; 

the panic in her eyes. 

All of this is mine. 

All I have now. 

My whole life spent 

in sleeping, and somewhere 

a small voice urging me to wake. 

Then I did, and found this world, 

hard and sharp and bright. 

Everywhere, there are eyes, 

watching, calculating, 

and though I never want 

to see Caligari again, 

I do wish, on bright winter mornings, 

to return to that other life, 

the one in which all
of the edges are soft;
the days and nights, seamless;
my destiny, a list of random orders.

 

[William Reichard {1963- } 'From Cesare's Diary (the somnambulist speaks)', in Sin Eater]