A nocturnal transmission

Because even after the Ambien’s brunt hits I’ll have some mind left for you. You’re the kind to scramble neurons and force them into a different set of rules. You’re in other places now and that’s not okay but in those last moments before the Zolpidem drags me under I’ll catch the only glimpse I need, it’ll carry me through for the next few days of sitting and listening and unthinking and my ergonomic chair slowly wrecking my posture and the tiny little constant dopamine spikes of blinking green lights and email pings reshaping my brain in unfortunate and unexpected ways until I am so much more Pavlovian than I ever wanted, just this hulking sweating reacting thing, all objects no subjects, eventually a lever to be pulled or pushed or whatever until something pops out I guess. There really is a parallel universe where you kiss me to sleep, where I’m not ashamed to use phrases like “kiss me to sleep,” where I can even say them to my friends, where I call my friends and really tell them how I feel and tell them I love them, but even now, here in our universe, I feel the embarrassment rising, something like bile but warmer and less acidic, trying to deter me from thoughts of you and the few friends I hit the lottery to have. I feel the weight of pharmacology and my shell-shocked brain pulling me away from all this and all I can say is I hope we talk again on Gchat soon, I hope I can earn the occasional text-on-a-holiday, you have no idea how much five minutes of your voice bounced off a satellite and into my ear, even just telling me about your life in a happier sunnier state, would unscrew me a little, would maybe even make me cry sometime between popping those 10 mg and plummeting down into a leaden dreamless sleep.