Slumber
by Brenda Jean Carlson
She sleeps the way she loves: fully, wholly and deeply. With the tenacity of a just newborn child. The breath of devotion she puts into it is as intense in its consciousness as it is in her reluctance to submit to it willingly.
When she sleeps she curls up in a tight fetal ball; she craves the false warmth and security that seems to come with such a position. Slumber has to seduce her in slowly - has to woo her softly into relaxing. When it finally does, though, her arms reach an immeasurable breadth, and the loudest alarm clock on this earth couldn't wake her prematurely.
She never knows how to greet sleep - with a gun or a pillow. She fears the Sandman with the same fervor with which she craves him. I've watched her hold siege against the Dreamweaver, holding stance with a singular kind of desperation. She's fought to the point of collapse when he could finally stop trying to debate her; settling instead for carrying her off to bed.
Sleep is just easy for some people. It never has been for her. She chooses her times of rest and places of slumber with ultimate care. Oh it's not that she didn't once sleep with the ease of simplicity - she probably did long ago. It's just she's been tricked into other beds, and never quite woken from their nightmares: she's learned far too well the price offalling prey to dirty sheets.
To sleep is to emotionally exhale - it's the natural inclination. The human condition demands we learn to let consciousness go. But there's also something far more fundamental about it then that - to sleep is to be in community. It's starts within the womb, the process of growing while a watchful mother stands guard. We're meant to sleep, but never to sleep alone.
No one ever bothered to teach her that, though. Never gave her a warm bath and tucked her in. No one ever woke along with her on those dark, looming nights when she came awake screaming at demons wrapping her just as tightly as the sheets. The child never got lifted into a warm lap, and the girl never received a strong hug and a cup of hot cocoa. Given that, I guess I'm not surprised at how she props her eyelids open. She's so rarely found hope waiting on the other side.
Loving a chronic insomniac isn't easy: it degrades one's own sleep if you let it. Another's nightmares can also quickly augment your own with out even trying to have that intent. There are early mornings I've been exhausted, and all but ready to find easier bed mates. Only the sight of her - at peace - finally passed out atop the mattress, is enough to remind me why I haven't yet left her to her own means. And it has nothing to do with how she brews her coffee.
And so I've learned to walk the floorboards - learned to take each sunset as it comes. Some nights the struggle is all but nonexistent and other times in the darkness I seriously consider the merits of spiking her drink with extra strength Unisom. I'd never give up my spot in bed bedside her, though - I fought too hard to get here in the first place. And when all else is set aside I'm here because of one simple fact....
Domino's absolutely beautiful when she finally sleeps.