Sometimes in the middle of the night when she wakes up she buys books.
It’s not the wee hours of the morning; more like the belly of the beast, those 2am sleepless voids.
The waking habit began years ago when she was still married but unaware she was sleeping with the enemy.
Her poor brain tried to tell her.
Sleep rendered her conscious mind subdued and with the guards no longer at their posts her Cassandra broke through the fog of sleep to conjure aches and twitches, warnings misunderstood and therefore unheeded.
“It is fine“, she said.
Except it wasn’t.
Twelve years now she’s been sleeping safe but since Arlington the tigers come at night.
Grief is a peculiar midwife. The finality of burying the last adult who had loved her birthed an awareness, and with it the recognition of what had happened; what she had lost.
It was almost too much.
Incapacitated by sorrow, she was unable to write so she took solace in the words of others. Books had saved her before and would again.
She began a reading list and made the rounds of the Little Free Libraries, loving hard copies best. The night-time wakefulness became less terrifying as she had only to pick up her book.
She became certain about what she would read, the same way she became certain about who she would have in her life.
No longer willing to spend time on a story that did not suit her, she realized she needed to have books lined up like it was a rodeo…one on deck and one in the hole. There was safety in numbers.
The tigers settled while she did her midnight book-buying, and sleep eventually returned. The morning would bring work on assimilating her almost-forgotten Cassandras.
One breath, one book at a time.
Unexpected peace found in the Night Bookstore.
