The Promise Of Sleep

All that was left to do was sleep.

She knew better than to expect immediate answers, so she didn’t. It wasn’t something that she held with disappointment anymore, she was now familiar with how time and patience work together. So there was nothing left to do but sleep.

She followed the light in as far as she could after the fear had put its claws on her back. It was a gruesome thing that viciously whispered to her “Get down.”

Fortunately, that’s all it could be – a whisper. There were other things inside of her that were louder, and so getting down was only a distant temptation.

It was still gruesome though. She wondered how something without breath could even be that heavy, so much so that it felt like it was shredding her back. It made sense she also thought, her back was the perfect target for what it wanted her to do – how do you stay up without your back?

But the louder things were there too, she couldn’t make out what they were saying because there were so many of them, but they all seemed to agree on one thing – we’re not going to let her die.

With that, she got up from the spot that she was sitting in. She decided that she did indeed have to get down, but it wouldn’t be along the gruesome thing’s road. No. Her destination was along a road you travel to with your knees. She bowed down and spoke it all away with the few words that her tongue could carry.

After that, all that was left to do was sleep.

She slipped into her rest, knowing that she had been heard.

This was enough for her.

The next morning she woke up, grateful that she had managed to sleep peacefully. It’s not that she didn’t expect any less, but she knew it was always necessary to still see the moment with gratitude.

There was something particularly different about this morning; a gift was waiting for her in her sacred place. It was an old man in the form of a bright red wax, carrying a child on his back. This was the ghost of the candle that she had lit the night before. It didn’t take long for her to figure out who the red man was, and that it was because of him that her rest was without terror. While wrestling with the oddly adorable idea of a man wrapping her to his back, she remembered that a few days ago that her yellow candle had left her with a bright woman had been carrying her in the womb.

Was it because of the yellow woman that she had been confident enough to sleep, without awaiting answers or reassurance? She concluded it to be so, while realising that it was the old bright red man that ensured her sleep was not interrupted.

Standing in marvel and awe, a small stream flowed from her left eye. That was always the eye that seemed to release burdens. She knew then that she would always slip into a peaceful state of sleep. She realised that in the feminine she is safely tucked in the womb, and in the masculine she is safely wrapped on the back of a warrior.

She thought about that gruesome creature that had sat on her back the night before. What an ugly big and scary thing it was, she recalled. This was followed with her breaking out into a gentle laugh. It was funny to her that the gruesome thing would probably never sleep again, knowing that it had in fact played a hand in delivering her to a promise that she could breathe through forever.

The promise is that there are gruesome things out there, but she will always still have her sleep.

She whispered back to this promise: “Thokozani boGogo naboMkhulu.”