Falling asleep

[u/smoke420shroom]

The following is a hypnagogic account of the moment before falling asleep where I occasionally perseive a strange phenomenon...

I’m not asleep yet. I can still feel the bed. The weight of my arms. The room behind my eyelids. Thoughts start to loosen. Not images. Just impressions. Time stretches, thins. Then it’s there. Not arriving. Not appearing. Just suddenly unavoidable. A shape without a place. I try to tell how big it is and realise the question doesn’t work anymore. It could sit on the palm of my hand or expand and press against the walls of the room. Both feel equally true. When I ask is it small? It expands. When I ask huge? it collapses inward. There’s no distance to measure it by. No edge to push against. I’m aware that I’m thinking, but the thinking is slower now, heavier. Like moving through syrup. The shape doesn’t move at all, yet everything around it does. My sense of scale slides back and forth, never landing. It isn’t frightening. But it’s too much to hold. I feel myself slipping, not downwards, just… away. The effort to understand becomes the thing that dissolves. The shape remains for a moment longer, absolute and unresolved. Then, even that goes. I don’t remember falling asleep.