I am plagued by nightmares. I thrash, awake, asleep, awake, until miniature lightnings spark my sheets. Electric on all counts. I can tell you they do not burn.

In the harsh glare of day I remember the curve of her unclothed spine. I pick up the phone to call him back, only to remember they were all dreams. No one is waiting for the call, no skin was on show. Once I almost didn't turn up to work, believing they'd truly fired me.

My mother would recount my haunted child body sitting up straight in bed, wide-eyed and mumbling, sometimes shouting, demonic with fury. I'd wake in different parts of the house, different beds, the light entering from different sides and different windows. I'd keep a dream diary and awaken to read my seven dreams that night. There would be train trips, fleeing from slow criminals, concrete feet. I dreamed about my much-desired rollerblades, only to have the imagined store assistant emerge in the daylight, same name, same everything. I told him they'd sold out, hadn't they.

Later I would make coffees for the academics during the university semester, return home and continue well into the night, standing at my chest of drawers--the exact height of the espresso machine--shouting orders for cappuccinos and long blacks. I'd dream the impatient crowds, sugar sachets, muffins, the spaces wider than the walls around. In a drowsy dark grey world of blurred faces, I'd be the star barista who conquered time and froth, appeasing the masses, moving in flurries. Suddenly I'd be lifted out, what what what is this. The shuffle back to bed, only to repeat the night after.

I had to leave when the sleep-deprived migraines began. In some ways I guess was the best and most underpaid worker they had.

To lose control in sleep, to not be aware and be aware, to fall around furniture like a soulless night walker. A prostitute of somnambulism, I live two lives, in sleep and out, but they melt into each other until it matters less and less. I have headaches, leg-aches, back-aches from moving to the rhythms of my dreams. Life and sleep-life. These days I have trouble remembering which is which.