The Pitter Patter

I need something else, something other than the low-down hum of silence that’s blowing through my wide-awake bedroom like the ghost of all the roads I never took, the heater dead, the night frozen stiff at six below zero.

I’m lying here in this fever-cabin with the taste of my favourite Mexican restaurant, Las Iguanas, still rolling in my stomach like a bad dream; refried beans twisting away like a volcano on the verge, the blast imminent.

but worse is that holy nothing that’s humming through the soft and endless, keeping the sleep far away like a woman who’s already gone down the line.

back in seventy-six, my mother handed me a conch shell and said, put it to your ear, hear the sea, hear the whole rolling ocean in there, and I did, and I heard it crashing forever. but now this rooms like a shell, walls closing in, nothing but stillness and the ache in my back from Tuesday when that bastard on Milton Road ran the light and crumpled my bicycle like a love letter nobody wanted, frame buckled, me flying holy through the air.

I need a woman, an angel with strong hands to rub menthol cream into the knots I can’t reach, her breath on my neck, louder than any sea from my mother’s shell.

I climb out of bed, naked feet on cold boards, light a cigarette just to hear the match scratch alive, and stand by the back door sucking smoke and listening to the snow settle soft outside like a benediction. and then I’m back under the covers with nicotine ghosts dancing’ on clean sheets, waiting’ again for the thermostat’s little click of mercy.

but wait, wait, something new.

little feet dancing’ a crazy jitterbug across the ceiling, pitter-pitter-patter, not the wind, not the heater, too quick, too alive. mice? Christ, mice in the attic doing’ the boogie-woogie while I lie here wrecked. or maybe it’s a bird trapped up there beating’ its wings against my insomnia. I stare up at the Chinatown paper shade glowing’ faint from the streetlamp, the silence finally cracked open, the night suddenly full of tiny, frantic heartbeats dancing’ right above my head.

sleep will come quickly,
no cheap wine for the morning,
payday tomorrow.