A man during night

A man during night

She is disturbed. How can I be stuck in a bed with such a weak creature as she?
Her defenselessness was attractive once… on cold nights through snowed parks. It was so easy then to soothe away her fears with my hand against her reddened and goose-bumped cheek. I feel so distant from that alien thing in our small bed. She cries for help night after night.

I have not touched her since the honeymoon, she is too busy for it. Nights of sweat and screams, of shivers and shuffles are more company to her.
Why won’t she stop?

I tried at first to be there, but quickly she drifted farther to insanity. She knows not what goes on with her. When we used to talk, she’d always say she was afraid. But of what? And to that question she could never find an answer.

So, I learned by now how to hide from her night terrors…

Slowly with time, when she’d wake all unsettled, I no longer cared to hear her say she didn’t know why.. I simply, with so much ease, ignored her…

I hope she never finds out that when she wakes… I too wake, and I am there by her side… silently faking sleep, until her panting soothes away… then I sleep.