A Woman's Cry

I wake up terrified several times each night. The terror passes over me like a gust of wind, quickly and smoothly, but it leaves the irrepressible chill of confusion behind on my skin.

I never know what wakes me. My brain plays tricks on me, echoes of voices ring in my ears and I stand, my hand to my belly, and walk out of my room to the stairs to investigate. No one is there. Silvery wisps like the glinting flashes of fish slip out of my mouth when I open it to breathe. They escape me.

At the window, my cat watches the moonlight. The echoes are fading fast by this time and as my feet begin to recognize the cold of the floor, I am grounded again, realizing that I am standing in my underwear with my palm to my belly.

I go back to bed, feeling an empty ache. The esoteric, intuitive part of myself knows whose voices I heard, knows where they spring from and where those silvery flashes of fish scales went, but the rest of me cries out that their fates are ended before they could ever have begun.

My body panics with each waxing moon. It is inconsolable and the ticking of the clock gets louder every night.


with love and squalor,
ekw