when I was a child I would often awaken 
in the middle of the night to a world that had slowed

time would take on a macabre dimension, 
a drawl

I felt as if moving through syrup
with a voice not my own inside my head,
more a sense of a presence, a grinning, derisive entity 
that hovered inside me

and I would call my Mom and she would soothe me,
we'd sit at the kitchen table, she smoking a cigarette
wearily, while I would wait for the feeling to pass

later in life I would rest on the couch regularly,
mid-day after school, and successfully will myself to 
exit my body, float into the kitchen and bounce above the cabinets there

one time I turned my attention outside and knocked over a trash can
that sat at the curb awaiting pickup

now I find I am anticipating correctly things that are about to happen,
sending people mirrors of their own texts at precisely the moment
they send me theirs, as demonstrated numerous times these past days

friends are forever saying "you must've read my mind..."

I am again in slow time, 
afloat and prescient

Chagall 2021