Shards

Your eyelids would become impossibly heavy, the cicada thrum pushing them closed as your head fell further into the small pillow.

Their call throbbed and rose to envelope everything. It strained at the canvas above, longing to burst out, as liquid and warm as any of the waves of that summer morning. Floaters criss-crossed your eyelids, back and forth across the dull red background as inexorable sleep came.

The rubbish truck whines at a darkened kerb and you half wake, tense. Its metallic voice screams, you screw fists into your eyes and the note becomes a white-hot point of light cutting through your hands, filling the space behind. You throw your mouth open and picture tiny shards of metal showering the ceiling above.

Turning your head slightly, you see her eyes. They are wide, and she pulls herself closer across the bed. The dark shape of her hand rises and gently crosses your cheek, trickles down your neck. You can feel her quiet smile, and for that moment the cicadas return. The warmth, the lullaby of the evening sea.

‘Is it the ringing?’ she says, as her hand stills in the cleft of your chest.

Her dark eyes draw you in. The half-light the last moon throws across the open bedroom door renders everything soft-focus. You crawl achingly towards that beautiful silence, somewhere just a little further down.