Tensile

http://stephenlin.bandcamp.com/track/tensile

I'm not one of the oceanic sleepers, the waves of people who toss and roll and spend themselves like foam on the night air. I never move but to swing in the wind, and I never swing unless someone opens a fucking window for me. For once I'd like to rock with my dreams and learn to take their punches with anything else but my body. But my body's well built at least. At least this round wooden frame is wide enough to trace out the sun I never see because I catch dreams in me. I catch the dreams that the ocean can no longer bear and so throws out carelessly as if it were something heavy. I wish they would break me.

My insides aren't hollow, but they were mostly empty space. They told me I can never be full, but I've since learned to how to be filled and to never want to see someone sleeping under me again. For them, the familiar antagonists of their nightmares are feathery things, fallen from a bird that they at least get to see. And feathers get fucking heavy eventually. They keep leaving them with me as the morning dies and they learn to fly out of bed, stop pretending to be dead and instead rediscover what it feels like to battle real monsters without the handicap in their head. Because I take the pain of a giant father's anger and frustration on a good night, and a stained surgically dull knife on a bad. I take the tears on the most beautiful face you'd ever seen as the dream reminds the dreamer of how fear of rejection and self-loathing translate to a broken heart that can't love anyone stupid enough to love it back.

I tell myself they deserve it, that no one should ever carry the weight of themselves alone but then who can save me from what I am? I am a dream catcher and I only grow in. I'm made of sticks and strings and beads and I trap inside of me the most poisonous parts of humanity so that they can breathe easy. And so my lungs have no place to expand and my heart beats less than weekly. Maybe monthly at best. I just want to rest. I wish I were alive so that I could wish I were dead. I'm a dream catcher. I'll fall off the wall eventually.