When I return to my childhood, I return to an inky silence and indigo walls. A buzzing light from the 

lamp I couldn’t reach. Slow and sad piano carried down the hall. There is my mother, her warm solid 

hand on my forehead. Her deep, heavy voice.

At night I would stretch out languidly beneath the faintly glowing planets on the ceiling. I would count 

the seconds between each blinding celebration of headlights. I would sing! 

Mom would weave for me in two languages and I’d exercise my mouth around her stories, I’d fit 

unfamiliar words beneath my tongue. 

Pressed between the pages of childhood insomnia there is fear, there is unreasonable loneliness, and there 

is my mother checking on me every hour. 

Now, I think of the nights we would both have trouble sleeping. I’d whisper into your hair a question and 

wait for your uneven breath to form a reply. We’d lie in the dark, in each other’s scent, in each other’s 

warm necks and laugh without sound. More air charging in the January room, the room that wasn’t ours, 

that we were borrowing while we wished to leave. While we sat and waited for what was next. 

Now, I lie in a different kind of silence and tonight there are no glowing planets, no stories in any 

language. I count to two hundred and I want to crawl into a different shape. 

I want to call you, I want to beg. 

A snarling, bleeding thing lives in my throat.