In the Middle of the Night

I hear the bed creak and the sound is foreign until I remember my girl. She is downstairs below my bedroom, on the summer porch, sound asleep on a hot July night in Vermont. Swaddled in unconscious slumber, she floats in a serene garden of green vines and purple flowers that salve her dreams like a cool towel placed upon a fevered forehead. I try to imagine where her mind travels to in the middle of the night, the tortured motion picture of a fifteen-year-old brain on fast forward. Within her deep sleep she counts not sheep, but the struggles that cannot be articulated by day.

I rise early to write morning pages, rocking softly across from her on our cradle of a porch. The promise of a new day knocks gently, but the leaves breeze flutters “shhhh”, let her sleep.” Her dark hair frames her face like a crown of soft, fat feathers. Her skin is alabaster, pure and refreshed by the night air. She floats through her dreamsleep bound in the languid, fleeting essence of innocence. The serenity of her nighttime is mocked by daylight, for the summer has been a restless toss between childhood and womanhood; an adolescent purgatory she can’t wake up from. And I wonder anew how it feels to be a righteous teenager with a bleeding heart, a compelling agenda, and only a learner’s permit to get her where she wants to go.

Kim Dannies ©2008