That Ripple

That ripple
up your left arm.  That
awful sense of
something crawling.

Nothing there, though.
No bug, no mouse,
no unseen being to be tossed
aside in spite of its
invisibility; you can’t 
get a hand around it
so it must not be there…
correct?

Of course, unless this part of you
has slipped into a secret world.
Unless you are lying on the bank
of a long vanished pond,
your arm immersed in ghost water,
spectral critters there
foraging upon 
your forearm.

You wake up shuddering,
thinking…
but is this thinking?
Isn’t this
an entirely different way
of knowing?
You can’t be sure of that — 
all you are sure of
is that you won’t be soon
falling back to sleep.