The Humid Hours by Quinn Ponds
I woke with the crust of sleep sticking my eyelashes together . The sign of a heavy and good sleep is what I believed it was as a child . A sign that in between my pretending to take a nap and actually falling asleep the Sandman had come and thrown his dust into my eyes when I wasn ’ t looking and forced me to nod off . I rubbed my eyes and saw I was still in the same place I was when I was last conscious ; on the floor alone . I could hear the dim chatter from the other room , the adults were talking . I could hear the ticking of the wooden clock on the wall of my grandparent ’ s wood-paneled wall . Everything in the humid summer afternoons felt dreamy and lazy . Waking up slowly and hoping I had slept enough to satisfy my parent ’ s desire for me to have a nap . I laid there awake . In no real rush I listened to the ticking of the clock and I concentrated hard on that moment in time . I wanted to put a bookmark in its place , a marker to come back to whenever I needed to feel the moment again in the future . Knowing somehow as a child that there was an adult me in the future who wanted and needed to go back . Already knowing before I ever got there .
I knew I was in trouble from the very instant my mouth formed and the spittle collected in the perfect portion to be launched from my mouth . From the precipice of the moment I did it I knew what the
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