uncast

This is a sequel to a previous poem, sanctum.

Back in the labyrinth, underground, I wrestle with tangled dreams and bedsheets, and the light of an alarm clock glows on my restless stirrings. I embrace the woman beside me and she softly sings a lullaby, but I do not understand the words. She whispers, "Time to sleep. You've been awake for so long. It's time to rest with me now." I wait for her breaths to lengthen then I slide off the mattress, step across the cold concrete of that dark room, walls black and empty. There is a distant doorway but I haven't reached it in years. Every day I try to leave, and every day she pulls me back into her suffocating pleasure. She says her name is Sophia but I don't believe her anymore. I remember a time without her, a time outside this place. The future is a warm mist just outside my reach. I feel it radiating. This night, I make it to the door, into a glowing hallway. Light at last! Something draws me up, up, through hallways only vaguely familiar. I hear her voice behind me crying out, searching, begging me to turn back. But I ascend, through door after door, until the passageway narrows so I must squeeze up and out of a hole in the base of a large fruit tree into air so fresh I nearly faint. On the surface, all is blessedly silent except for a quiet voice in the whispering leaves: Sophia's voice. The real Sophia. "There you are, my love. There you are." And so I rise and walk into the dark world where my only real weapon is that voice within. It is real. I am real. I stretch to infinity in all directions.