In Waking Hours

How long can this possibly go on? When Annie was sick, I used to wake up in the middle of the night with my eyes glued open for hours. Annie on the east coast, me on the west, we kept the country from tipping over. Then she went away, and the sleepless nights returned, no matter the tricks I tried. So now it’s just part of me, and I’m supposed to get used to it. But it bugs me. I lie awake and think of things that seem to make perfect sense. I drift into a half sleep of impossible dreams and wake up again. This time, I give up altogether and get out of bed, go to the other room and play pictures, write emails, look stuff up. Wait for sleep to creep up as a possibility. Wait for the weight to lift.

I’m walking down a dirt road far away from home, wind rustling through the trees after the cloudburst. There’s a rusty old truck in a field in the distance, overgrown by weeds. A crow is perched on the rooftop, in no particular hurry. Nobody around, I’m just walking, and it’s some other time I wasn’t born in. A world with nobody in it, just this road cutting through the cane fields, where it’s warm this morning after. I remember a face, I remember a voice, I remember the sound of grinding gears and screeching brakes. Getting out and walking. Broken glass from the windshield. I touch my forehead to make sure I’m not bleeding. Floating inches above the ground, words of a song that hasn’t been written drifting through my head, proclaiming all the things that would have been enough. Your smile, your touch, days and nights and looking back, a fork in the road. The sun goes down different every day, and I’m standing in the moonlight waiting for the dogs to start barking, some sort of sign I’m real. When the sun comes up again, we’ll be far from here, a fork chosen, a clear path forward, a world less frightening with each step through the unknown.

I stop and sit down to regain my bearings. You’re singing the song I’ve been struggling to write in my head. Of course you know the words. It was you inside those words, and the music is simply a part of you, like your breath on my neck in the night. I have no piano, nor guitar, nor sweet sounding voice to sing to you. I have no words to paint your colors. I never told you the whole story, but I told you the best parts, and that’s why you walked with me. And it’s always been enough, even when it hasn’t been nearly enough. There’s a pause in the words where you get lost in my arms, lulled by my solo guitar that disappears the miles and carries you along, deeper into the forest with me. My guitar has no strings, but my piano has all the keys.

I’m waiting for something to break, a rip in the sky to let the rain buckets in. You know all the best parts, yet you willingly take on the worst parts, too. Nobody knows me like you do. You’re like candy to me, the kind you can eat and eat and never get sick of.

It’s raining on the other side of the forest, and soon it’ll be raining here, too. The road will wash away beneath our feet, and so will all the dreams. Sleep comes easily when we’re ready for it. The waking comes, regardless.