The way you sleep bothers me more than it probably should. You lie there on your back, with your hands crossed over your chest and your expression eerily stoic. I haven’t quite figured out why I choose to watch you hours after you tell me to leave you alone. I don’t have a sick fascination with watching your chest rise and fall as you whimper and groan in your sleep. It’s not as if you force me to stand in your room at night and watch you lay there in the most uncomfortable resting position in the world. But I do…and I don’t know why.

You think I’d grow bored of it by now. We aren’t close and if you were to open your eyes you’d probably yell at me to leave. In some twisted way I want you to wake up and glare at me with those dead eyes. I quite enjoy the banter. Yet, you continue to sleep and that peacefully relaxed expression stares up at me--mocking me. Because I can’t sleep; not when my mind is filled with the ghosts of those long dead. Not when this sword’s ominous glow haunts me in my dreams and burns my flesh with its searing flame.

I’ve watched you sleep for a fortnight before it dawns on me why I can’t pull my eyes away. You sleep like you’re dead; and you are, but you’re not to me. You remind me of the people I’ve lost over the years. You haunt me like all of the others. You’re at peace when you sleep and I remain here haunted by memories that I can’t let go.

The way you sleep bothers me because I’m afraid one day I’ll lose you too and then I’ll be left here remembering how we used to fight; how calling you names set your temper aflame. I’d be left alone with all the moments we’ve shared together and you’d be at rest. At peace…finally.

So I wake you up and I make up some half excuse about how you forgot to turn the kitchen light off. You glare and yell at me and for the short lived moments as you stomp off to the kitchen to switch off the light because you’re too disoriented to use your powers, I can hold on to what we have, and to you,  a little while longer.