Bridget Allison's Blog - Posts Tagged "nature"
Slumber
I forgot to buy more sleeping pills. Slumber is as difficult as capturing a hummingbird. Have you held one? So elusive. So unexpected. Such a miracle in its stillness, the pause of wings and that panicked beating which halts because you have caught it within your gentle grasp. You expect a little death from the immediacy of its surrender. In your hand it changes from force to fragility. You let it go because to have held it and to have stopped its frantic beauty at all is to arrest nature. It is a cruelty too large to commit oneself to for more than a moment. I held one once and couldn't even bear to study it. I felt as though I had stolen something from God.
My sleep is not filled with frantic beauty but the panic, yes the panic, I do recognize.
I surrender unwillingly and only aided by a fistful of Benedryl.
I awaken with an anxious start as though I have been carelessly cast from the dark grip of a less than gentle hand into unknown and rarefied air to fly or flail. My eyes open in a flash, my mind flutters, my heart pounds. My first thoughts are "Am I too late for something? Who have I let down? What do "they" need?" They all need something. They need me to love them harder, tell them everything will be okay, or that it will be someday. They need me to lie to them, to tell them they are strong until they believe it and that little blown seed of a lie takes root and becomes truth. They need me to hide all signs of my own delicacy and vulnerability and be a force.
I am a hummingbird hidden in the guise of a falcon.
For them, every morning I force myself aloft.
My sleep is not filled with frantic beauty but the panic, yes the panic, I do recognize.
I surrender unwillingly and only aided by a fistful of Benedryl.
I awaken with an anxious start as though I have been carelessly cast from the dark grip of a less than gentle hand into unknown and rarefied air to fly or flail. My eyes open in a flash, my mind flutters, my heart pounds. My first thoughts are "Am I too late for something? Who have I let down? What do "they" need?" They all need something. They need me to love them harder, tell them everything will be okay, or that it will be someday. They need me to lie to them, to tell them they are strong until they believe it and that little blown seed of a lie takes root and becomes truth. They need me to hide all signs of my own delicacy and vulnerability and be a force.
I am a hummingbird hidden in the guise of a falcon.
For them, every morning I force myself aloft.
