Surprisingly, I wake up.

I don't know how long I lingered in the dark.

Some times it felt like it had been centuries since I breathed, and on other days it felt as though I had lived only hours before. I catch glances of images, like phantom movement in a mirror or breath misting on glass. A woman with green skin, flashes of trees, a red light. Images that come and go, without end.

And then, suddenly, life.

It wasn't as though I suddenly drew in a breath. Or that my heart began to beat again.

I just came back, like breaking out of a nightmare.

I don't know how long I lingered in the dark, I said metaphorically, but I did wake in the dark and lingered there for some time after. True blackness, without an ounce of light, so deep and unrelenting I only knew I was awake because I could feel myself move.

Slightly, though. Just slightly.

I reached up, it was like pushing through soil and then I realized that I was.

It took forever, but I knew in absence of a heartbeat that forever was all the time I had.