The Arms Of Sleep

It is what she longs for, that big white cat. She just wants to curl up, let the sunlight warm her up, and then drift. Let’s just drift. Forget it all.
I want to forget. Forget the project, the articles, the words to write, the things to create, the music to make, the work to do that seems to rip at every part of me, making me visualize ropes and running and knives and parking lots in far away places where the night is cool and calm and no one talks.
I want to do all that.
She wants to do all that too, that big lazy cat. So let's take the road of sleep, that big fat white bed with its comfy flatness and thick blanket arms. Let’s just go together because it would be so nice.
Only, they won’t let me. They know what will happen to the big fat cat. The masses await. Their perfectly creased uniforms, their lines, drills, repetitive movement and cat calls. The deadening regimen. They know just how to invade, one dream at a time.
One little nap and then all thoughts become one. Soon there will be no dreams, no drawings or songs. One thought, it is just a train away, as my mom would say.
I shower and pack and sit waiting in my silk jammies, just ready to go. I am tired and the night is dark and cold and there are too many collages to make, so many videos that await my hands and attention. The list is so long, stretching not just through and over this lifetime, but into the next and then the one after that.
On a cold night like this, it seems like too much. The bed looks good and the cat, that big cat is purring, waiting for me to join her.
The train is going, straight to dreamland as my mother would say. They are all calling my name, don’t I want to join them? Their hands urge me forward, the memory of the endless drift beneath a world of warm arms, soon I won’t have to think and struggle.
Just get into bed and let the engines start. Soon, we will be among the masses. The starch, the formation, the highly scripted existence laid out like a simple map. It is all there, just outside the window.
Bodies without life. Smiles without purpose. Breath without creation. It is all right outside.
My cat is there, waiting for me to slip into bed. Just for a moment, just one little nap.