Anxiety: That Pest
Those awful nights –when you’re haunted by a memory, a conflict of the heart, an anxiety dream. We’ve all experienced those nights of tossing and turning, without sleep, that somehow… and wonderfully, pass into lovely days. A poem that digs into and chronicles one of those recent nights for me:
Night, Awakened
by Barbara Boughton
The door creaks.
I slip out of the bedroom,
where you lie sleeping,
fitfully, under heavy blankets.
3 a.m. A dangerous time in our little house.
A haunting dream awakens me.
My mind is snared by thoughts of the hidden, shadowy self.
I sink into the plush brown living room chair,
enshroud myself in grandma’s knitted blanket,
sipping cool white wine,
feeling it course under my tongue.
I remember past slights and buried angers,
the pain we provokedin each other’s hearts,
the way we exposed our weakest places.
I try to recapture the joy of those bright afternoons,
when we hugged and leaned into each other,
laying down balm for our wounds.
Peering into the darkness,
where the cats, disgruntled, slide by silently,
I wait for the first rays of sunlight,
hours and hours to go
until you awake
the room is filled with warmth,
the smell of tangerines, fresh ground coffee,
the vigorous routine and lively rhythm of the coming day begins.
