Lights
Out
by Dana Smith
“Time for bed!”
she calls.
Reluctantly, I
drag myself up the stairs, going as slowly as I possibly can. “I don’t wanna
go to bed,” I mumble. No answer. She just shuffles me to my room.
Tucked in now,
all my defiance drained out of me and kissed good night. I’m happy for about
two seconds until I realize the room is about to be plunged into what seems like
the darkest of all darks to a six year old. “No!” I scream out right as her
hand flicks off the switch. “Please,” I say, begging. “Please leave it
on.”
She sighs, but
unlike all the other nights when she just turns the light back on, she comes to
the bed and sits down.
I’m thinking
that she is going to come over and start to tell me that I need to learn to
sleep with the lights off: be a big girl. But no, she does nothing like that.
Instead, she
starts to sing.
Now I’m starting to
drift.
“Bless-ed
dreams and . . .”
Trying to stop my
eyelids from drooping like glue on a four-year-old’s arts and craft.
“Sleep
tight my love . . .”
I
want to fight the feeling, don’t want to sleep, but everything is fading out
anyway.
“May
tomorrow be sunny and bright . . .”
Maybe sleeping without
lights isn’t so bad.
“And
bring you closer to me . . .”