The Demon on My Chest
On nights when sleep forgets how to find me, a weight settles across my sternum like a sealed iron chest. The demon is patient, and always early—arriving when the clock is most stubborn: 3:04, 3:13, whichever number plays with my breath. The room grows colder, and the air becomes a tasting of cold copper in my mouth.
From the first moment I learned its name, this shadow was less a creature and more a memory wearing a face: Mara. It does not roar; it breathes. It does not threaten; it presses. The chest becomes a locked door, and Mara, perched on my ribs, asks me to listen rather than fight.
Tonight, the weight leans down with the gravity of a decision I’d rather not make. The bed squeaks. The ceiling fan hums a tired lullaby. I hear the whisper first, a rustle like dry leaves turning inside my skull: "You forgot this room." Then the room reveals its tired truth—a parade of closet doors left ajar, a hallway of footsteps I once followed as a child, a grandmother’s shawl hanging in the dark corner where light never reached.
“I am the breath you refuse to name. I am the ache that lingers after a storm. Do not fight me; listen. Sometimes fear is a memory begging for a voice.”
The demon lifts the lid on a memory I keep under my tongue: the night my sister vanished in a yellow rainstorm, the night I lied to cover it up, the night I promised never to speak of it again. The weight tightens, not to trap me, but to anchor the truth so it can finally be spoken aloud. I watch the outlines of old guilt peel away, revealing a small, frightened child who believed the world would swallow us whole if we confessed.
- Weight equals memory, a map of what I’ve carried in silence.
- Whispers reveal faulty promises I still try to honor.
- Naming the fear loosens the fingers that clutch my breath.
- The dawn does not erase what I’ve learned, but it does free the mouth to speak it.
When first light breaks, Mara loosens its grip, not disappears. The room grows ordinary again, the bed returns to mere furniture, and I sit with my chest still heavy, but no longer hollow. The demon remains, a patient sentinel at the edge of sleep, reminding me that some battles end not with triumph, but with a voice finally found in the dark.