SKY 04.08.2013

Exhausted, I walk up the ladder and into my bed in the water tower. I'm ready to sleep the kind of sleep where my bones feel like they can release themselves into the under side of my mattress, where my muscles go mush and melt. Out of the tall skinny window by the ladder, the sky is gray and the clouds are moving fast and the wind is whipping the palms unruly. They’re moving around like gigantic starfish that got a chance to stretch their fingers and poke at some clouds just for fun. They’re showing off how they can flex their joints through the night sky and they’re doing this dance by my window. Next, the wind comes from the other direction and the leaves begin to unfurl and flail separately. They writhe and flutter and gyrate and gesture, and now they are the sea anemone of the sky. I imagine the ocean above my head, above my bed, and the world flipped upside down. Every couple of minutes the wind stops. Everything gets so still, and the fronds become frozen like fossils making stencils in the skyline. I imagine all of this as just a bit of pre-slumber entertainment.

I start to fall into that sleep I want so badly, and then it picks up again. All the various wind chimes and rock chimes and shell chimes in the garden are making music like a strung out symphony. Like a music box from an attic, where, I imagine, the ballerina leg is broken, so when she does her pirouette, she trips the beat over and over again.

I want to be able to pass out like he did. He, who was up at 5 am to drive a rental car 4 hours away to a mountain he’d never been to, so he could ride his snowboard for the first time this year. He, who after taking 15 or so runs down 12 different trails drove back, and before stopping home, drank a couple of beers at a new bar with an old friend and then picked me up from work because he's kind and it was raining. He, who usually can’t sleep when it’s like this, but tonight he does and he does so deeply.

He’s fast asleep and holding me, and I’m propped up on my forearm looking out the windows like I’ve gone mad. I don’t know what I’m looking for or why It’s making me feel so frenzied, but my eyes hover around each window like a goddamned hummingbird. The tower rumbles and the light keeps changing with the trees casting shadows on our wooden walls. I can see the light shifting even when I close my eyes. 

The wind is getting stronger and I’m propped up with his long arm draped around my stomach, just imagining. I imagine the bee houses blowing open and the swarms making figure 8's down Monterey Boulevard, while dripping honey on the pavement. I imagine the feathers blowing off of the chickens who are perched on their branch in the coop. I imagine the rats that stalk the chicken feed from the low hanging trees, being collectively thrown, tails taught and circling, to a far away neighborhood. I imagine the wind uprooting the mustard greens and the garlic and just taking all the yellowing weeds. I imagine he and I are blown out of the window spooning; flung across the city on a fast moving current thick with fog.

I wanted to sleep, but the night was wide awake. I guess I remember saying somewhere down the road that I wanted to be awake for everything. So, here I am, staring at the sky and listening to the wind in the middle of the night.