Some things aren't true until you say them...

10.15.2008 - 5:18 p.m.

Towards the end of the evening, I have a soda, which means I won�t sleep. I lie there, toss and turn, lie there some more. For a while, I put on my glasses, intending to give up�to go downstairs for a snack or a book, to go to the computer room for email or TV. But I don�t. I lie there, shift my legs, shift the cat. It is disorienting, for things to have sharp edges in the dark. Nighttime has no borders for me, and hasn�t since third or fourth grade, when I first became a four-eyed owl.

In third or fourth grade, I�d just moved to my own room, from sharing one with my oldest brother. My second brother had just graduated from the crib, so I traded for his old nursery. I picked yellow for the walls, and my little twin bed had a purple bedspread with rainbows and unicorns on it. Most importantly, though, I finally had shelves for my growing collection of Breyer horses (with the odd Barbie horse, She-Ra horse, or Toy-Trader�s Horse of Indeterminate Origin thrown in for good measure). Every one had a name. As I type this, the ten Breyer horses who survived my childhood most intact are on display in my office�Tariat, Roamer, Dreamweaver, Briarlee, Twilight, Gem Twist, Maverick, Sergeant, Stormy, Gemini, and [mumble]. The mumble, in my memory�s defense, was a gift long after I�d stopped telling myself elaborate stories with the herd in my backyard. Though I can almost remember his name.

So they were very real to me. And what happens, particularly while trying to go to sleep in a new room, when you are a child whose eyes are just beginning to go bad, is that they start to move in the dark. You stare at them, the focus shifts, and the muzzy edge of their shape changes. They toss their heads. Their hooves move restlessly. Their tails twitch. Not a lot; not so much that it isn�t imagination. You are a skeptical child and you know you are doing it on purpose. But you let yourself believe anyway, for years, that there is beautiful, welcoming magic in darkness, where blindness is only a better way to see.

And you love the late hours for the rest of your life.

-stonebridge

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