Sleep

My love affair with sleep is a tumultous one.  We are lovers in the latin sense: fiery, passionate, unpredictable.  We can spend hours together in bed one day and then not be on speaking terms the next.  Our ups and downs are conflicts of legend, battles between good and evil, mythic conquests where I, the hero, try to tame the beast, to control its elusive powers through domination and force of will.

Other times, I am the sycophant, the pleading worshipper, begging for attention, desperate for its return.  I am the sailor's wife on the widow's walk overlooking the sea wishing for my lover's safe return.  I am desperate with worry that I won't be reunited. 

I am the worried parent in the night, ear pressed to the monitor, listening to the sick child's rasping, the sputtering and coughs through the night, the low moans and whistles, the sickness percolating in her lungs, a science project gone awry.

Other times, sleep is the void.  It is emptiness and nothingness.  It is the moment after world's end.  It is the moment before creation, it is absence and blackness. 

I think sleep and I need couple's counseling.