I'm not paralyzed, now. 

I don't suffer from sleep paralysis, thankfully enough. I'm perfectly capable of moving my body however I'd like from the moment I'm here, and I'm here. 

I try to move my body, and I just - can't, the impulse flickering into existence and out of existence in a bare moment, like the flaring of an almost lit match. 

My body is... heavy, and warm. It feels almost soaked in, lathered and swaddled in the hazy liquid heat, bathed in sticky steam and left to rest. My breath comes out easily, but my lips are still, frozen, whistling with the little eddies of air flowing out of my still chest. 

My arm twitches slowly, experimentally, soft felt-like pebbles of the sheets playing against my groping fingers as I squeeze it, and hold it, cradling it up close to me. 

My feet twitch, knocking against the folds and swirls and tangles of blanketing bedsheets, still far from the cold of still idly circulating air. 

My ears twitch, a little, as the dull dim hum of the fan registers properly for the first time this morning. 

I wish it was more comforting to know that the reassurances I whisper to myself, in the morning quiet, aren't just notional. I've refined the skill of jumping out of bed into the world 'til I could wake up spring loaded, bouncing out of bed with the alarcity of something mechanical, and tuned the time sense of my heart fine enough that I could meaningfully wake up exactly at the time I set out beforehand, so long as my body was well kept. 

It doesn't feel terribly well kept, now. It feels more then anything else full, full of feelings, full of loosely laid muscle and fat and skin, full of stretched sinew and settling bone and flowing phlem and fluids. 

It feels if anything constricting.

It smells like... around 11 am, this time, the sweat sinking into the too-hot covers adding an indefinable lateness to the moment. But more then that, it feels like... 

Slipping, time that's rolled around past and through the process and deposited me out into something different, past the morning, an expectation beneath my closed lids that makes the world feel like it'll be inevitably brighter and full of bustle.

My head lolls around in place, the sheerness of the wall which can only be climbed by an endless fount of impetus fading from babel-like heights to something more merely skyscraping, leaving more free and relaxed away from the darkest depths of the mornings' crags and caves. 

I sigh, low and liquid, lips relaxing and easing up, gingerly falling against each other as more of the facets of the waking world shift into focus. 

My hair tickles tenderly against the bedding, strands pressing up against my cheek with the stiffness of straw and the softness of silk alike, ragged and raw and oddly interesting in how colorless it feels. Closed eyes really just recontextualizes it, doesn't it? 

My shoulders slide back and forth. It feels almost like I'm standing or even climbing, now, pools of soft fabric forming footholds to stand on as I reach up into something higher, mobility getting gradually easier. 

I could get up now - it'd honestly be easy enough, now, even beyond the notional angle. 

...I laugh, wistful and weary into the pillow, and blink my eyes a bit more firmly shut. 

I'll be here for a while longer still, it seems.