Night Shifts to Day

Night Shifts to Day

I slept for a few hours after a late night wander through the house. I would have slept longer if not for the child at my elbow asking for breakfast.
I waved her away, promising to climb out of the warm covers, and then went back to sleep.
I woke again to the flutter, flutter, peck sound of a bird trapped in the chimney behind the headboard of the bed.
It's an old house we occupy, and it used to be warmed by coal. Many rooms have these tiny coal chimneys along the wall, and the basement has a chute for delivering the dark lumps of fuel.
The chimney cap related to our bedroom has some kind of flaw - we keep forgetting to investigate the problem and fix it - which allows small birds to be swept down in high winds.
So we wake up to a flutter, flutter, peck of a desperate animal used to freedom but caught in a trap.
Each time, we clean off the headboard and heave it out of place with mercy and pity mingling in our eyes. We open the windows on these windy days, lock out the cats, and take off the little cover behind the bed.
Each time, the bird finds true sky so fast that we have trouble identifying the species and I realize that locking out the cats is ridiculous - they wouldn't have time to make a catch.

In the Details

In the Details

I stood at the edge of the bed today to fold the laundry. The huge windows don't let in much light on these overcast afternoons in late winter.
The room is a mess, no matter how many time I promise myself I will pull myself together and clean. Stacks of things that haven't found a place or are simply out of place compete with the layer of dust for someone's attention.
I can hear the wind working around: the flag out front snaps, like a cheap firecracker, while the old coal stove exhaust behind the headboard emits short puffing sounds as the bitterness tries to sneak its way into the house.
Downstairs, you can hear the wind howl around the back of the house, mournful and profound. Such howling started when we built the outlying garage and I'm oddly grateful for it. I hear the moan and feel less lonely inside, more appreciative of these walls that surround me.
I am chilled down to the core and feel stifled in these clothes meant to keep me warm. I soak up hot beverages in vast quantities but it hardly touches the cold;
I am tense: against the cold, with the anticipation of sunshine, out of fear that the dark coldness will never go away.
No matter how often I live through this stage of winter I always lose confidence that spring will come again. One day, my fatalistic heart believes, the sun won't shine anymore and I will be lost here forever.