In The Night

I can't sleep tonight. I've been lying in bed for two hours, staring at the television but not actually watching it, listening to your father sleeping peacefully beside me. My loneliness is the only thing awake aside from me. Took a sleeping pill a minute ago, and I'm hoping that might help.

Now that I'm home again the pain is back; the visit to the hotel was like a step out of time. An eye in this hurricane of agony I've been living in. Now I'm home--there's a pile of dishes that I'll need to wash tomorrow, and a to-do list that will need attention. The mundanity of life, back at home; your Daddy going back to work in the morning. The emptiness in my heart was waiting too.

I felt like you were so close when we were at the beach; almost like you were inside me again. In my heart and my soul, but not in my belly anymore. Coming home used to feel so good--curling here in my little safe nest on the couch. I used to balance this computer against the roundness that was you, feeling your little kicks as I typed.

My body has almost healed, but not my heart. Not my soul. The moments just stretch on, a lifetime ahead of me without you. I could, I have cried an ocean of tears, but it doesn't release the pain.