Every night now
I wake up at 3, 5, and finally, at 7:30 am
Of course, at my age, that’s not so bad
But the reasons for each startled wakefulness vary with the hour
but each time has the same feeling of dread
the same balloon of anxiety in my stomach, so I turn on the light and listen
listen for breathing in the next room
listen for cats galloping down the hall and across the furniture
listen for a rattle of a doorknob, a slither of foreign fabric creeping down the hall
I read for a few minutes until the words blur and I slide back into dreamland
the last wakeup is more a silent alarm of my fat boy jumping on the bed and aiming
for the window sill above my head
Sometimes, he slips out and falls, scrambling away to my startled invectives
as the blood starts to ooze out of the scratches dotting my arm like a roadmap of pain
His thinking is simple. She’s up. I’m hungry. My work is done.