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Nocturnal

It the harsh light of day, it might look like settling.  Sometimes it feels almost impossible to explain.

But in the darkness, everything changes.  She is prey, victim to delayed terror she can’t allow herself to feel anywhere else.  For years she has woken to enclosing silence, sweat slick on her face and blood pounding harshly in ravaged flesh.  Sometimes it is almost too much for her to bear, feeling the ragged edges of sanity slipping so far out of her reach.

No one else can understand that he has become her anchor in the darkness.  Her screams are now answered with warm arms and murmured reassurances, washed away with the surety of skin and feelings not anchored in fear or improbability. 

In these seeping, broken moments when she feels like she is failing, he is everything she needs, warm and solid and there for her.  No questions or explanations needed.  He won’t ask.  He can’t.  He doesn’t understand anything more than the fact that she is teetering, slightly broken and wavering on the edge.  Anything more is immaterial.

He doesn’t look to her to fix things.  She doesn’t know quite how burdened she is until he looks at her and expects nothing.  Never realizes how cut off she is until he holds nothing back from her.

She’s broken and falling and in that moment he is everything she needs, so she grips him tighter and wills the rest of reality away.

She doesn’t need daylight.

Only him.