Sleep

By Peter Bowden


Sleep came quietly, the way snow did in the stories her mother read her, not all at once, but piece by piece. The little girl lay still and listened to the house breathe. The refrigerator hummed as if it were thinking. A floorboard sighed somewhere down the hall. Her blanket was warm and heavy, and she pulled it to her chin, because that was where dreams began if you did it just right.

When she closed her eyes, the room did not disappear. It softened. The shadows grew gentle and sat down instead of standing. Her thoughts drifted like dandelion fuzz, one about tomorrow, one about a dog she believed she’d had before she was born, and one about nothing at all. She had been told that sleep was where the mind put its toys away, and she imagined her thoughts lining up, small and tired, waiting their turn to rest.

Just before sleep took her, she felt lighter, as if the bed were a boat and she had been untied from the dock. She was not afraid. Sleep knew her name. It carried her to places where time did not hurry and no one asked questions. By morning it would leave without saying goodbye, but she knew it would return again that night, patient as the moon, waiting for her to close her eyes and remember how to drift. 

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