The fear comes out at night. |
Night Lions Somewhere between midnight and dawn, I find myself wide-eyed. I would swear I heard heated sniffing, but all is now quiet. The lids are not heavy, but the eyes are prickly fruit, and I’m feeling tomorrow threaten to slap my face. Hot tea calmed me at nine but wreaks havoc at three, and I’m roused by the teeming floodgates; I value the bed sheets too much to risk their dignity. At ten past the hour I am back in my dent, studying the walls and ceiling. Invisible spiders weave their webs, but I know they are there, working and smirking. In a fine shred of nightlight, there are only blacks and grays, in woolly, ominous shapes, pulsing quietly in each dark corner. Why is it that the dead come alive at night? What is it about the dark that brings them home? The faces of ancient loved ones horrify and mock me in the darkness when I’d believed they’d held me dear all those years before. The sound of the house twitching is the herald of doom that looms. The moans and groans of stairs and walls possess the power to stop this fair heart from beating . In the daylight hours, I feel nothing, but in the night I’m lying bloodied in the coliseum; the night lions circle me in want. My parents will die and leave me orphaned and at once I’ll be abandoned and twelve. I will not cope, and I’ll lose the use of my legs, growing grey-haired in pigtails, nothing ever feeling the same again. My love will stop breathing. He’ll be waxed like fruit, but cold like packed cod, and I’ll freeze next to him, unable to move. I shall want to pull up the covers, never letting my feet touch the floor, praying that he’ll return, if only to take me with him. I’ll be alone on my birthday, all birthdays, with a self-baked, teetering cake. The candles will bleed into the icing, their light blurred by a swell of tears, and there will be bergs of pink paraffin rolling to full stop in the glaze. One piece will make me cringe at the sweetness which will be newly toxic to my tongue and I’ll throw the rest away, trying to remember how it used to be, or how my name used to sound in song: I won’t even know how old I am. One day I’ll be old and lonesome. The children won’t remember the night feedings or the scratch-made cookies and I‘ll be left to fade in an antiseptic corner, newly christened ‘Sweetheart’ by the women dressed in white. I’ll cry softly to the window and they’ll carry on without offering me a tissue or a comforting word. I’ll be gone and no one will know. There’ll be nothing to remember, no story to kindle smiles. I’ll be a name on official papers, a white-haired withered lady who looked like all the others; indiscernible with cracked powder for a face and a soiled, floral dress. I’ll be a breath that breezed through, moving nothing, leaving each of their hairs in place. But then the sun breaks through and my love murmurs dreamily, his body breathing for him as he sleeps. I feel heavy and numb, so I roll toward the yellow wall and watch as it bursts with victory and butterscotch, wondering why I never noticed how soft my feather pillow is. Drunk and groggy, I luxuriate in the safety of buttercream sheets and close my eyes, knowing that I am still here, the world around me, the same. Though slightly hung over, I steal a bright morning hour to sleep, relieved that no blood has been lost, and that the night lions have gone to bed hungry. This time. |