The Witching Hour

 3:00 a.m.

Again.

She lay there, eyes wide open in the darkness, breath shallow, heart racing as though danger lurked somewhere just beyond the walls. Nothing moved. Nothing changed. Yet her whole body was alert, a silent alarm she could never disarm. Something was not quite right...she felt it deep in her bones, but the reason had long blurred into memory, a faded ache rather than a memory.

Sleeplessness had become her most reliable companion.

Once her body had been her ally...vibrant, warm, quick to respond to joy, to desire, to life. Now it betrayed her in niggly ways: joints stiff, nerves frazzled, nights broken into jagged fragments. Menopause, they called it, as if the word was neat and clinical. As if it hadn't upended the very core of her being.

Her hands moved of their own accord, traitorous in that fragile space between not-sleep and almost-awake. Like Judas, she thought with bitter humor, they reached for her phone nestled among the cool pillows. The touch-screen flared blue, harsh and familiar, and her gallery opened as if guided by memory rather than logic.

There he was.

A photograph from another life. Ten years gone, but the sight of him still tightened something inside her. He was laughing, the kind of unrestrained, head-thrown-back laugh that used to sound like an invitation. She remembered the salt and sweat clinging to the worn canvas of his jacket, the feeling of her hand pressed to his chest, right over the relentless thump of his heart. Once she had been his muse...wild, laughing, sure...

Now the glow of the screen only illuminated the deep lines time had carved, the hollow places grief had settled into. The worst part of being alone wasn't the silence; it was knowing that the last person who unlocked her passion and her joy, was gone.

She shoved herself upright, duvet twisting around her like a lover who refused to let go.

“Sh@#t.” The word cracked from her throat dry as the Sahara. “I’m getting too old for this.”

But inside she was ageless. A spirit still fierce, still restless. She still wanted to pick up her Canon or jump on a train and disappear for a week...the urge was there, raw and hot, a defiant refusal to be settled. Only her body bore the years, stubborn proof of the time she could not rewind.

She rose on unsteady legs, steadying herself against the night. A shuffle across the cold floor, a hand on the rippled wall, and she reached the kitchen. The simple motions grounded her in a way memories no longer could.

“Chamomile,” she murmured to herself, like a weary spell. “That should do.”

She filled the kettle, the high whistle a brief, necessary intrusion into the dead silence of the apartment. Steam curled into the dark, carrying the soft scent of warmth and something soothing. She sat at the counter, sipping slowly, swaying her legs, letting the calm settle where panic had lived moments prior.

Back to bed. Back to the hush of night.

The duvet welcomed her, heavy and cool, and at last her knots loosened and her breath evened out. Sleep crept in gently, grace granted.

And in dreams, he returned, not the man he became, but the one she once knew, the one who looked at her as if she were made of stars.

In sleep she was whole again, and the world was soft, and love had not yet learned to leave.

Sleep was her salvation.