Member-only story
Small Hours
That morning, Heaven sent an angel,
whispering mantras, she came to me.
Openhearted and exhausted,
I was stretched out on my bed,
she was seated in a chair,
it was after midnight and the voices
of day had calmed to a murmur,
but the sun was bending upward.
Daybreak was near
when she appeared
In the form of a ghost.
My ghost, she calls me by my name
and I listen to her chants.
Her songs buzz and hum like
old pipes in the ceiling or
the interior of a living building
on a night so cold it numbs the skin.
I know my ghost is an angel,
because my heart doesn’t leap
off of my bed and away from me
at the sound and suggestion of voice.
She stays close, attentive, knowing that
listening isn’t only the job of the ears
and that dreaming doesn’t belong
only to the mind.
