What I did past midnight tonight

I certainly didn't sleep. I was just closing my eyes, though, lying on my side, like I do, when I heard her beginning to seize in her room down the hall. I say down the hall, but it's only a few feet. I can hear her, even when she takes that first breath or perhaps it's an exhale because it becomes a groan, but first it's just a breath and I hear it, even when I am just there, falling to sleep. Falling. We fall into sleep and we fall over. Onto the ground. We fall under a spell and out of a trap, away from harm and backward in shock. We fall in love and also out of. I have fallen in and never out -- of love. I am in love right now. Can't you see it? Sophie has fallen, over and over, fallen under a spell while falling into sleep. Seizures often happen at the threshold of sleep, the place where eyes are closed and the thoughts are threads, a fish tail flicks. The liminal. The measure of my hatred for them is their resistance to falling victim to -- what? Anything. They've fallen victim to nothing so my hatred is everything. I know, even so, that I've fallen for it, delusion, illusion, maya. Things have long since fallen out of place. I have no control. I sat on her bed and wiped her hair away where it had fallen into her face. I wiped her palms, the drops of sweat, the drool, fallen away from her mouth. I told her it was okay. I wanted her to fall back to sleep. I wanted it to all fall away.


Things fall apart.



Nonetheless, there were no more diapers in Sophie's closet, and after a seizure, she needs a change. The case is outside at the back of the yard in the shed.



That's what I did past midnight tonight. I wore my long black nightgown and swung my phone's beam of light, let it fall right then left. Please, no creatures, I whispered. I walked down the steps from my bedroom and fell into night. Feet on gravel, a distant siren. I reached for the box, let it fall off the shelf, paid no mind to the corners there in the dark where the light fell away and I walked back to the house with the box up on my bare shoulder, the lace of a spider-web fell and caught on the lace of my gown.

We are brave people. We are strong.