Awaiting the Phoenix

i awake to a cold sweat snailing down my face, feeling like i'm masticating insects. In-fact, i, myself, feel like an insect. Not as a whole, but rather, segmented from myself, not of my self. i do not understand this & in the dark, the hand of confusion presses upon me even more firmly.
i reach for the flesh of my wife - something to grab, hold, that is more firm then the fabric of a Dream. Instead i come away clutching the fabric of the sheets, & somehow that is more hollow then any Dream.
She is out of town.
This occurs to me only after i search the house for her fleshy bosom to rest my head that is spinning in a tumult of avalanching clouds. i stand there in a stupor trying to remember when she is to return, but i can't. i just simply...cannot...remember. This is worse then the fact that she is gone: the non-remembrance of her ETA is a beetle burrowing into my ear. It is a slash across the epidermis, drawing blood. It is a corset, not to remember. & at a time like this, the strings pull taut, & there is nothing else to do but immerse yourself confusingly back into the shadows & await for the cosmic Phoenix to rise yet again.
& that's exactly what i do.