By Hugh Behm-Steinberg
It’s too early, but I’m awake, on the ceiling, looking down at myself, still asleep, lightly snoring.
I can’t help watching, how strange and lovely my body looks in just my underwear, on its side, one arm over Moana, spooning her, then turning, restless. Then it’s her turn, in her sleep, her arm around my torso. I have no idea what I am dreaming, I hope it’s not something terrible. The fan is blowing, the blanket and sheets a slow moving ball passing back and forth between my body and Moana’s. It won’t be dawn for awhile; even the cat’s still curled around itself.
“Why are you up there?” Moana says, in the recliner, sketching our sleeping bodies in her blue sketch book.
“I’m worried. I couldn’t sleep.”
“I know!” Moana says. “Sometimes, I get so exhausted, when I fall asleep, I’m also wide awake.”
Carefully, I climb down from the ceiling, trying not to disturb our resting forms, standing unsteadily on the pillows. I wonder if I just got back into bed, maybe squeezed myself in, I could go back to sleep, and everything would be all right.
“It’s ok,” Moana says, watching me try to do what’s so obviously impossible. “Come downstairs; have some tea.”
Downstairs, the kitchen is full of us, Perry’s and Moana’s, and we’re using up every mug in the house. How does this happen? Where do we all come from? How many times a night do we get born this way? I do a quick count: at least fifteen? What point is there to us being here, to all this writing and sketching and drinking and gossiping? And what will happen to us when our bodies wake up? How could we live, doubled and redoubled, knowing all that we know has been multiplied, afraid to go outside where anyone could see how messed up we all are?
The Moana’s are looking at each other’s sketchbooks, the Perry’s are reading each other’s poems, and I feel guilty because I haven’t written any poetry in such a long time. My hands are shaking so much I’m just about to spill tea everywhere.
One of the Perry’s tells me not to feel guilty, time is a gift, and another Perry puts his arm around my shoulder, which feels both weird and right; he says, “I got here ninety minutes ago, and already I have the start of a manuscript: you’re going to do fine.” He hands me a red spiral notebook from a stack on the kitchen table that I dimly remember purchasing when I was awake for a project I gave up on before it even started, he hands me a pen from the box.
So the rest of the night we drink tea, write and draw, our cat ignores us while our sleeping selves toss in bed. Just before dawn, even though nobody has to tell us, we wash all the cups; it’s time for us to go. We don’t know what will happen, we don’t have a choice, but neither are we afraid, our drawings and poems are good enough. It’s like the house has tilted, and outside is where we belong.
But one of the Moana’s grabs my hand and pulls me upstairs. It’s so hard, moving in that direction, like walking into a storm that grows stronger and stronger each step we climb into it. Finally, we are back in our bedroom, it’s just before we’re supposed to wake up, and Moana carefully, carefully puts the sketch book under her sleeping self’s pillow, and though the wind that only blows around us is trying to rip the pages from my hand, I do the same for myself, who rolls over without opening his eyes, asking someone in his sleep why he still has to write poetry after all these years.
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