Last night

I wiggled over every inch of the new orange sheets on my bed. Hunting for something.  Not able to find the thing that eluded me.  It reminded me of the night I watched my mother, with her stroke, work for hours to try to slide her legs from the hospital bed. Centimeter by centimeter, she worked the legs.  She was scared, she was laboring as hard as she could to leave that place, this situation, the fate that she sensed was coming. 

Sometimes, I forget that every day I am one day closer to dying.  Last night I knew it was true.  I awakened myself repeatedly, making sounds, talking, moving.  When I went to the bathroom at 3 am, I saw how dark it was.  That's always so surprising to me.  I am alone.  In the dark alone.  No one near.  I feel less than human.  Like I am an unnamed tree in a wide forest.   Or a star.  Or pill bug.  Last night, that singleness seemed stapled to the edge of my frontal lobe.  And I was searching, searching for something in my bed.   An arm to hold onto, a sliver of skin to rest against, someone else's breathing.  But there was only me, and the night and the swishing of my legs across the sheets.  Restless, disbelieving, wishing I would bump into someone else but me.