This Wild Darkness: The Story of My Death. Harold Brodkey

my heart and lungs as I had with my posture when I was awake. I woke aware that I’d dreamed, and there was a fraction’s hesitation before it became obvious I would not remember my dreams, that they had been about death and that my waking self would not reproduce any part of them for me. But I knew they had been gentle. I woke without the slightest confusion; in my weakness I knew who I was and where I was and what my predicament was. I did not once imagine myself well—or safe. I woke in a secondary mental chamber, as if I were an Olympic runner of illness and death, one who would lose this time but who had trained off and on throughout his life for this. And so I woke prepared to play the day’s game again.