Lynne Saner

The mind buzzes and spins, trembles and flits, flashes and funks. She moves, she moves, she always moves. Darting eyes and dancing feet. She cannot rest. 

I — who is that? — watch her and see her as a child flailing on the ground, tantruming and afraid. Why punish her? Why tell her she is bad or wrong? She is just a child, wandering the woods alone. 

I — again, who is that? — see that she is both the wandering and the woods. She wanders lost in herself. 

She dreams monsters and creatures that would destroy her, conjures trees with branches that would grab and tear her apart, imagines animals with teeth that would gnash and shred her, digs holes in the ground so deep that there she would fall, alone, alone, alone forever.

Oh, doesn’t our heart break for her?

So we sit and expand until the mind and her woods fit into the crook of our arm. We take her up and hold her in our wide open space. Now, now, we coo, here, here, as we hold her to our heart.

In time, we feel her go limp, we watch her eyes flicker and close, we hear her breath fall into slow metronome. 

And with open arms, we sit, and hold her while she sleeps.