Strangulating Parallels
I had fallen asleep like a tree, with my fingers touching above my head and the ball of one foot resting on the inside of the other knee. Waking, I found the lantern still burning from the long night, and the early morning hour seemed no later than the one I had left.
My expectations still rest with the sea of sheep I found on opening my door. There they all were, sleeping in numerous silence.. all around the moonlight, so silent I had to run back and again in the open space to find my breath, before hitching a ride to town with the miners.
Even now I wish I had not gone. That instead I had laid in the dirt, and fallen asleep as a tree. Misery arrived with the dawn like no other misery, like no other dawn. It was the same day then, too. Oh, what tricks the calendar plays. I should not have put out the lantern.