the day against the sky

It's hard to describe the dark.  Lying in bed eyes shut tight.  It is the weight of a day that is too like the one before it and the one after it.  A day that reoccurs as the middle sister in the middle seat of a car stopped in traffic.

My whole body hurts.  It's a nursing home of complaints: my foot, my back, my shoulder, my right side, my head, my lungs, my jaw.

I search the dark for a reason to get out of bed. I find a dozen good ones but none of them are mine.

The weeks between travel tend to do this to me.  Time is sliced and place between two bookends.  In that space I can never find myself.

There isn't time to slip off into the white of winter nor is there time to chase the cold, rosy light at the end of a snow bit trail.

Do you work today, he asks when I finally appear in the bedroom doorway.  Without knowing what day it is I answer yes.

There is News and coffee and the sound of a cat wanting to be let out. The house around me accepts the day as I wait.

If I could do anything, I ask myself... I search.  My mind drives the roads. It scans the valley.  I see groceries bought with a credit card.  Phone bills, electric bills, tuition, and school projects piling up.

If I could do anything today I would go back to bed.

Sometimes the dark is delicious like coffee and I can swim in it.
Sometimes it is thick and sticks like tar so that nothing gets done.

This darkness is like a sheet of thin plastic in the wind.  It billows around me. When I breathe it gets in my mouth.  When I try to see it covers my eyes.  It is noisy too.  A trap in the wind flapping.

Hidden beneath it I am a ghost.  I get up. I workout. I shower. I clean. We do school. I prep dinner. I leave for work. I work. I return. We eat dinner.  I go to bed.

In my dreams I stand in the doorway of an old white house.  The house is down a long dirt driveway. It faces west.  There are trees all around it.  Mountains shadow the sky.  It has a small kitchen and a cozy front room with a fireplace and big chair.  The walls hold nothing but windows and shelves of books. It is always 1:00 in the afternoon.  And it is silent minus the ticking of the clock.