Non-Narrative Horror’s Not a Genre

If you’re not asleep, you can’t wake up.
If this is actually happening,
There’s no appeal to a waking world.

You’re already in your afterlife,
Your Limbo lacking Paradiso,
Inferno, or Purgatorio.

You woke up on these shores, and these shores
Are all you will ever get to know.
You can climb on a raft, start to pole,

Climb in a boat and pull on the oars.
The river’s in flood, dark, and tumbling.
Pray to the Angel of Death because

Without help you won’t ever rest long,
Much less cross out of this flesh, this rush.
Barring Death’s drowning, help’s not coming.