The sound of laughter pierces my ear - it's not the soft kind. Not the polite giggle over your boss's joke. Not quite the hearty chuckle over your best friend's stories. It's somewhere between the rattling of chains, the cracking of thunder, the banging of your heartbeat against your throat.

Of course it's just the stars. They call for my company yet again. There's a fine line drawn between euphoria and madness and I sometimes wonder if perhaps my sanity has been teetering on it all along.

If perhaps the knowledge I carry with me is a one-way ticket to destruction and not a passport to truth. I admit I may have lost it with the wisdom I left behind the moment I packed my bags. Too many lives have been lost in haste, but too much time has been lost in patience.

I've been told time and again to leave my baggage behind at the gates but the thirst of a self-definition is one I cannot scrub off of my skin.

The world is not so small after all, I've discovered. But when I choose to count the stars instead of counting sheep, the sky only seems smaller every passing night. They've started to vanish, one after the other, leaving me to wander in this vast, empty sky. Leaving me to adjust to the dimness of the night. I fear the pitch-black darkness and the absence of the moon. This must be what sleep brings. I wonder what eternal darkness must look like. I wonder if the nightmares will stop if I sacrifice my heartbeat to it.

Last night I traced constellations onto my bruises. It seems that the stars must have found their way under my skin.

I've watched the sun break into the day and swallow the night countless times. It seems that I've begun to absorb the moon's ache.

And it hurts everywhere.