A Dance in the Midnight (An Excerpt)

    THE WOMAN.
    When I was younger, things were so much sweeter. I had a family that was younger, dogs that were younger, and a home that was younger, and with that youth there was an equal innocence, you know? I had 3 older brothers, my mother, and my father all under the same roof adorned with a sort of freshness that all things newer have. They weren't new to everyone else, of course, but to me they were new. Very New. When I think about yesterday, I have this distinct image painted in my mind. Something like the strokes of a softer and finer brush, with more light and less shade. Something marked by warm and lovely pastels that seemed to have been crushed from the leaves of the Tree of Life itself. It sounds fancy and exaggerated, but when I was younger I felt I had life, and I felt my family had it too. Life... If you let that word roll around in your mind long enough, you start to think about being a child and what it was like when you were a little boy or a little girl and for the moment, as brief as it may be, it's as if you really were that gorgeous Esther who used her beauty and charm to save a nation from being murder, or that Moses who stood in that quiet fire of a cave when God whispered to you that you would save his people with the great "I AM" at your side. For just one moment, you can feel that ambience of value and relationships soaking into your skin and into your bones, and it tastes so good, so God-like. Today, however, I hardly have the time to let that old word sit on my mind long enough. And it makes me sad to say this, but remembering it is becoming more difficult and this, I think, is the thing I fear most. Sometimes I remember it, though. I'll be around the house and I'll be doing a chore or I'll see an old friend of mine or of my parent's and I'll feel it again. It's like cleaning out your closet so you can sell some old goods and you run across a limp and dusted doll sitting behind all of your junk. And in the middle of it all you look at that precious doll, just as old as you are, and you feel it again, haunting you and begging you to be that beautiful little girl or heroic young boy who had such vivid and detailed imaginations. But you sell it anyways. Not because you want to, but because you have to so you can survive and eat another meal...
    I'm not quite sure I've meant to say all of this either and I don't know how I've said all of this. I don't know. I guess you begin talking and what you say escapes your mouth so easily, almost like it should have been said long ago. These days, though, I don't pay much attention to anything. I just try and make it to sundown and to the next morning. Morning,.. That word is all I have now.