Ideal

It's 4:30 in the morning, he says, I have to give up, give in, go to sleep. Another voice from another time zone says I should go to bed earlier, adjust my daily rhythm after the sun and greet each morning with alert eyes and breaths of fire. The former appeals to me far more, but it ended in such wretched tatters.

Perhaps that was not the rhythm's doing.

I spend the night with children on my lap. They discuss my long blond tendrils and try to stay up past their bedtimes. We read about crayons, and I stroke their foreheads until they sleep. I wonder if I will abandon the idea of having some of my own; the world seems far too big a place, and the life far too short, to fit them in. You consider your current home -- the one thing that has consistently made you happy and safe, ever -- and realize again you'd end up having to choose one over the other.

You want to choose the world.

You just hope it will choose you back.