There is always a time of night that is quietest,
whether you are awake to hear sounds absence
or whether you rest tucked beneath a comforting blanket of dreams.
That is the moment when thoughts seem to linger longer
in the spaces between dreams or nightmares or fantasies.

Though when the seas of sound part, for that one moment,
my mind, whether awake or dreaming,
cannot help but drift to you, to us,
to those visions of the future that are too far away to seem real and too close for comfort,
those visions that pause in the space between dreams and memory,
forming a perfect future from the fragments of you, of us,
of the walls we tore down
to let each other in,
and the shadows that stretch from the walls
we are still working to climb.

The quiet is so deafening is that moment
that I cannot help but to seek solace…
but you are my solace and you are not beside me tonight.
When I turn over in bed,
my hands feel empty air
and my eyes see nothing but a blinking green light
at bedside
with no late night context.

I check my phone and see you wished me a good night four hours ago,
before the quiet and the tossing and turning.
Before I woke,
temples sweating
and temple crumbled.
I smile,
hearing whispers in my ear in the tune of your voice
and I roll over into a deep sleep,
the subtle sounds of summer returning
with the chirp of crickets
and the soft hum of streetlight bulbs.

Photo by Josh Marshall on Unsplash