Some Nights

Some nights I don't want to go to bed. Silence and solitude seize me and whisper Exploration. Time to be. Time to enjoy a simple reward won through housewifery. Typing words. Laying structure on the altar of art.

Some nights I run into 1:30, imagining I have no children. But then I hear troubled cries from restless sleep and my heart is conquered again. Again. It's a city never reclaimed - just a fool's dream of hell. I have those dreams sometimes, some nights. I believe lies. I run from joy into the arms of ease. Joy isn't easy. The earth it grows in is hard ground to till, but the greening is worth the sweat. Watered with sorrows, it grows.

Yes, some nights I doubt. I cry.

Some nights I wake from sleep laughing. Lightly, so lightly. The bed trembles with me and so I take hold of this joy that is wanting to shake loose. Tightly, so tightly. Don't wake her. But this maddening, irrepressible joy swells within me like laughter in the middle of a funeral. The seams are not strong enough. They stretch and tear.

This body is not big enough for joy or sorrow. They burst out. They pour out. Some nights they mix into green.

And so some nights I don't want to go to bed. I don't want to sleep. Shh. Some nights I just want to be green.