The Hour of the Wolf

[caddyman]

Everyone has a place they keep to themselves, be it a quiet room, a clearing in the woods, or even the windswept cliff tops overlooking the sea. Sometimes that place is replicated in one's head; a place of comfort and quietude where we go mentally when we cannot escape physically from the turmoil and trials of life. Wherever, and whatever, we all go to our private place from time to time, to think, ponder, or relax. Sometimes we go for just a moment or two, other times we may spend hours. We may go often, or only infrequently, but it is there, it is uniquely personal and intimate, and it belongs solely to one's self.

I cannot sleep tonight. I am in bed, but I cannot sleep. The bed clothes are pulled up to my chin, and I am lying under them, fists knotted into the duvet. My eyes alternate between tightly closed and anxious peering into the shadows in my room. The light is on, but this serves as much to deepen the shadows in the corners and under the furniture as it does to illuminate the rest of the room.

My eyes are gritty with fatigue, and weariness lies on my bones with the weight of the world; yet I cannot sleep.

For a moment perhaps, I nod: but then, unbidden and sudden, I am awake and alert, but more worn than before.

I cannot rest, though I crave sleep desperately.

For the first time in months, I went to my quiet place to think, to mull, to dream. That little space in my head, which everyone has. That place that is mine alone.

There were footprints. And they were not mine.