in the quiet
the dead still
of the early morning hours
I rise
unable to rest
in the predawn gray
I leave you warm forgotten body
so gently moved toward the sanctum
of the wall
remembering room for this shadow self
I am
the echoes I leave beside you
childhood swell around me
so many nights
I found me wandering
wondering
what it is
that wakes me
that makes me
roam
the same almost sick feeling
in back and stomach
are you watching me?
my body aches and reels
with stolen sleep
my eyes swell the landscape
turning and distorting all I see
driven
as I am
to stare unblinking
to focus unbreathing
on the lack of life
outside
to listen
poised in perfect inmotion
to the thick fog of silence
and unsilence
pulling me into the floor
the pallor and ominense
of a house at night
I want there to be cars
I want there to be those unnerving
reassuring
breaks of light and noise skittering past the window
I remember this summer
realizing
I was one of the mysterious
on my long journeys home
one of the frightening drivers
in the dead hours
when no one should be coming home
here there is nothing to reassure me
that time isn't
stopped
and the eerie pattern
of your nocturnal breath
offers me no solace
your dull and beating body
inciting illness
restlessness
and I must pace
must break away
and leave you
you never even noticed I was gone
so here
as my eyes slip
unfocus on the page
I know it will do no good
to return to bed
and if my movement
my sudden arrival
wakes and quickens you
it will be as to a dead thing
I cannot feel
and you
do not understand
I remember my father
I must have been very young
before he left
the way he would too
rise
and leave my mother's bed
to pace the house
not like the wildcats
but of something larger
and more hopeless
in a cage
and in my room
I would wake
and know
rise too
from the sanction
of my bed
past the infuriating breath
of a younger sister
out into the hall
her slight noises
following me
haunting me
as the tell-tale heart
urging me
making my hands shake
until I could leave the room
I hate to watch people asleep
and I will fight for hours
creating a silent battle of wills
to prevent myself from falling first
to protect myself
from the invasion
the rape of a someone's eyes
upon my resting form
these
are not even the hawk's hours
they belong not to the lovers
or the workers
even hungry babes
silence their cries for now
there is something horrible
something holy
in the morning
some sacred nights
if I was lucky
and my intuition on mark
I would find my father
so often half asleep himself
and before the embers
of a dying fire
and the glow
of an old television movie
no one has ever watched
there
in the sickening thick
the heavy of morning
we two
held our sort
of silent communion
the oppression
of gray and silence
sacred pocket of time
before she came to scold us
back to bed
and I sick with the feeling
of no feeling
would let her cold thin hands
tuck the covers
around my neck
suffocating by restriction
my body
as if she thought
a lack of tight sheets
was the source
of my insatiable walks
and in the dim
the semi silence
once again
I would turn
and watch your breathing
watch your
ugly pudgy sleeping face
little sister
as I have watched
so many others since
and drink in
the lack of emotion you stirred
sometimes wanting to wake you
or to slip a moment into your dreams
I would whisper in your ear
to watch if you would stir
ask you later
what kind of dreams you had
sick with the power
I waking
had
and then
I would wander
I could only take so much
and sleeping over
at otherÕs houses
I did the same
unlocked the doors
and stalked myself
quiet
around the unfamiliar corners
curling my long body
into sweet pockets
of shadow
you always thought I was so pure
what would you think
now
in these hours
as death
as the heavy weight of darkness
enfolds me
as a lover
and I grow ill
watching the world
balked and bloated
with sleep
as I deliberate
over your helpless
limp and dreaming body
thinking unthinkable thoughts
that will not even form words
in the torrid
soiled pool of my mind
I only watch
allowing myself to grow
strength rising
in my sickened indifference
until I must roam again
I have
on occasion
found my way out of our boxes
to roam the natural world
the one outside
who looks to be
holding itÕs breath
though I know
they are there
the shadow creatures
scuttling along the brittle grass
doing their hidden work
not fitted for the day
and I am one of them here
I always have been
in a way
my daytime
my even midnight self
would not imagine
and I seek the hunt
the heat surrounds me
as a bridal shroud
urging me on
as I
restrained and calculated
to the point that I do not even
seem breathing
only survey the surroundings
and pray for dawn
I do not frighten me
and this is not something I am proud of
walking on the shadow side
is not my favorite pastime
I am also a creature of the light
it is not easy
for us
we border walkers
we who choose which side we wish
though you would not believe it
perhaps
it is easier for you
it is strange to be so pure
so light
and yet able to walk
in the shadows of darkness
look now
look here my little almost-love
look at what you could have had
the best of both worlds
though I have never been yours
for the asking
copyright 1995 Ginger Pierce Davis