An Early Winter’s Disquiet

I awake

It is still darkness

All around me is a shivering haze of shadows

of whose forms cannot be held to one place nor one solid mass

My mind is foggy and I cannot remember what it was I remembered in dreams.

A feeling of love married to sleep that fleeted far away at the time of exile that is awakening.

I thought I could reach in and pull him out of there; we could lie awake next to one another in the stillness;

against each other in the heat

My anxious self, head against his chest, listening to his heart beat

My heart hurts

I forget what it was that I was dreaming of, but my heart is still running from it

I have not felt this way in a long time.

I wonder if I should call my acting coach for a session, but I know I can’t afford it.

I won’t be able to go abroad once again if I do.

‘What woke me up?’

I open the drawer of my nightstand, pull out a box of matches, and strike one.

The face of St. Michael appears out of the darkness; fierce warrior, defender of my dreams.

The prayer candle lit,

I wave the match out,

lie down in peace,

and whisper his prayer:

“St. Michael the Archangel,

defend us in battle.

Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the D-vil.

May God rebuke him, we humbly pray,

and do thou,

O Prince of the heavenly hosts,

by the power of God,

thrust into hell S-tan,

and all the evil spirits,

who prowl about the world

seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.”

I look at the door of my bedroom.

It is firmly locked.

I have not slept with the door open since high school;

(I had awoken from a nightmare;

looked out into the darkness of the hall

and the lyrics of Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper” were stuck in my head.)

I looked at my closet;

closed.

‘I feel like a child. Why am I still like this?’

I roll over and look at the moon through my window.

As it enlarges, fear grows in my chest.

I shut my eyes, pinch them until they hurt.

‘If it wasn’t there, I would jump at the sky without it,

like it was some hole or something,

some void for something to come through.

When it is here,

I am afraid of ghosts

or that a voice will start speaking from nowhere.

Our Father who art in heaven,…’

I forget how it goes with my eyes closed.

I am never asleep, but just drowsy enough that my thoughts start drifting off like the smoke that keeps filling up my room,

that for some reason I can’t shake off.

I jolt. I forgot that I had put out the match.

‘I am not going to burn alive tonight. I’m not going to die tonight. It’s okay. I’m okay.’

It is November.

Nearly a year ago,

last December,

I went on a silent retreat to a hermitage situated next to a revolutionary trail in the woods.

The cabin had the name of a desert saint or father and in the night the knob to the front door turned again and again.

I looked through the window,

into that dark night;

nobody was there.

I went back to bed,

the radiator popping furiously,

and every time I drifted off,

I heard a man’s voice saying:

‘Hey!’

I wake up again.

I look out the window.

The moon is gone; the sky has turned a dark pink.

A storm,

snow flurries and lightning.

My heart clenches.

It is broken.

I look for the moon.

I can’t find it.

I can’t even see the darkness for the tears overwhelm me.

I keep my eyes on the snowflakes piling up on the windowsill.

No two are the same.

Not even their reflections are the same when distorted in the funhouse mirrors of my tears.

It is the bizarre way in which I amuse myself when my midnight wretchedness takes a sudden turn into a pseudo-philosophical,

wholly solipsistic sadness that usually end at dawn with such thoughts as:

‘Eos, you are the dawn.

I am mourning, too.’

Or,

when gazing at the sunrise,

all ablaze,

full and red:

‘Ah. Dawn; when hell is unafraid to show its true colors.’

I am so like Odysseus,

trapped in between sadness and fear,

when I think I am safe from one, I fall right into another.

‘Dawn may come later today.

It might be blocked by the storm.’

I want to read to take my mind off things,

but I am too tired to do anything

and now, too awake to fall back asleep.

‘Maybe I’ll just sit inside and read tomorrow, watch the snow.’

I lay on the side of the bed where a boyfriend should be sleeping.

I can hear a heartbeat in my ears

as the lines of a poem come to mind:

“In the middle of the night,

when the moon’s light outstretched its arm through my window,

I stared at the empty place where it reached

and thought,

‘This is where you should be,’

then I would have rested easy.”

I roll over onto my side.

I clutch at the moonlit sheet.

I grab at snatches of memories in the darkness.

I am tossing and turning,

‘Where can I go?

No matter which way I turn,

I keep thinking of some other stupid thing like this,

growing sadder and stranger than the night.

I am sick of myself.

I am sick of being like this.

‘This is not like a Midsummer Night’s Dream; this is like an Early Winter’s Discontent at Undreaming.

No, that’s not a clever way to put it.

It’s just so claustrophobic.

Why is my chest so tight?

Why is it so hot?

Why is it so stuffy?!’

I scream.

I kick the blankets off of myself, hysterically crying,

I run to the window, opening it wide.

I am hyperventilating.

The cold air rushes in;

the prayer candle goes out;

the locked door moves slightly with the change in air pressure;

my breathing becomes calmer as I breath in and out slowly,

slower and slower.

I look out into the dark-redness.

I close my eyes,

almost sleep walk back into my bed.

I think,

‘I should call my boyfriend, but the line is dead.’

then fall into a dead sleep.

When I awake again,

it truly is morning.

Dawn did not come late;

it must have stopped snowing while I slept,

but I still see the remaining dawn red colors that show the evidence of last night’s odd snowstorm.

I hear the mourning doves cooing, when,

from my open window,

I hear a knock on my front door.

My sleep addled brain offers the following:

‘It’s probably just the mailmaid.’

My eyes are screwed together tight as I push my hand underneath my pillow,

rummaging for my phone to find the time.

I hear another knock on the front door.

A man’s voice calls up:

“Hey!”

It sounds off,

wavering like a mirage.

It calls out again:

“Hey! I’m here to pick you up!”

I find my phone and pull it out.

I squint.

It’s 6:30 in the morning.

Who in the f-ck would come to my house this early in the morning?

I roll over to go back to sleep.

“Hey!

I startled awake again.

The candle is out.

I push myself up on my forearms and put my hand on the drawer of my nightstand.

I hear the voice call again, but this time it is much deeper:

“Hey! Come out! I came all this way to see you!”

I am striking a match as I hear scratching up the side of the house.

“Hey hey hey hey hey.” The voice sounds almost like a murder of crows gathering.

I am holding my breath as if that would stop whatever that is from seeing me.

Many voices have started screaming right outside my window

and my hand is shaking as I hold it over the candle.

“He—”

The wick catches fire.

Silence.

I listen with my back to the window.

I’ll wait a few moments.

When I feel safe,

I’ll breathe again;

but looking down at my body,

I don’t know when that will be.