reading through the night
06 September 2004
4:54 a.m.
I have spent all this past day and night reading--lingering in my bed wearing monkey printed pajama bottoms and a thin tank top, enjoying the hard spine of my book weighing on the soft flesh of my breasts.
The chill of five o'clock in the morning wraps around my bare feet, my legs, my freckled shoulders, and my jaw becomes tight with its stoicism against shivering.
As I type here, I feel I could watch the sunrise in a few hours, rested and dream-filled, though I will not sleep, but there is something about the light of a room when you raise your eyes from hundreds of pages of text: it slants reality into hope.