[Erratic scrawls occupy much of the parchment. Below each messy line is another written in an obviously different, neater hand
approaching actual legibility and signed at the end only with the word 'Red']
In the abyss between slumber and wakefulness
want and memory gnaw on the mind,
like rabid dogs on a brittle bone.

There are no dreams, true.
But this endless half-drowning is not so unlike a nightmare.

Unending,
unerring,

the thoughts trudge back;
the thoughts stumble back;
the thoughts turn back;

like melt from the mountaintop,
as it yearns for a sea ever out of reach,
the thoughts plunge back.

They drag:
A blade not wielded in earnest until it was too late to win the war.
Blood unspilt until the thirst of it could no longer be assuaged.

Now the gore floats free upon a too-wide stream,
its current slamming down; flashing, jabbing, slashing hooks.
What use 'above' and 'below' as water floods a closed-off throat?

Dead arms flail and dead lungs seize,
claws scratch and fangs pierce
nothing but the bitter murk.

Is surrender prison or revelation?
Is the sinking an altar or desecration?
Is this blinded tumble somehow ascent, or damnation?

Cocooned in trashing waves, all sense blurs,
questions cease as recollection burns
like an awful pressure behind the eyes.

No thoughts of wading for the shore,
of one last heroic break beyond the too-far surface.

Enshrined in Forever, the reminiscer's sunk,
but the memory is never forgotten.

Penned by my hand on Closday, the 9th of Chakros, in the year 17 AC.