Nod

by Adrian Barnes

In sleep we all die, every one of us, every day. Why wasn’t that fact noted more often? When we doze off each night there’s never the slightest guarantee that we’ll wake the next morning. Every little cat nap is a potential game-ender.

I pondered the gym-toned celebrities who fell beneath the media’s lash. And the throngs of voyeurs, the millions and millions of people just watching it all. Paris guillotines. Gaza. Damascus.

All we see are crooked shadows, faces rewritten as caricature, fully-lived lives recast as rasped anecdotes.