Shakespeare Had Insomnia
This day will never remain as epic or sleepless as it is now, wrestling with my breath into the foggy night of flashing lights and fear. I want the loss to mean something, to change everything. It’s not enough anymore for me to remember it; I want it to remember me. Like a small playwright from England who had midnight ideas while his audience slept and dreamed and believed in nothing. He wrote of love and death and beauty, and people swallowed it all, and we’re still swallowing it as if it means something — and it must. It must.
Dust once living, at once muted; but I am here now! What of that, William? What of that, Mr. Whitman? Of these questions of me and you: of giant window-trees and childhood bedroom-dreams; of heavy pencils scratching juvenile desks, weighted with expectation and regret; of mentors and outstretched arms, and a blanket of truth that always keeps your feet cold; of salvation and death inseparable, and love and time incompatible; of mothers that miss graduations and weddings and birthdays and everyday; of old guilt that settles on the shelf housing dust mites and pain; of ancient translations and epic poems and capturing lines of truth to sew into our blazers lest we forget.
One woman knows the ninety-year struggle, ever renewed. She lives, breathes, gets up, makes her bed, boils tea, ties her shoes, demands purpose, and gives to anyone and everyone that she can. She comes home, cooks dinner, looks across the empty table, and tries to remember her love: his laugh, his tone, his mood, his wrinkles, his gait, his love. Her love is him with her, but without she’s just she at an empty table. And yet -and yet– she makes her bed.