Hyssop

At some point in my early 40s, I woke up one Saturday morning, pulled on my robe, and realized that I had to make my bed before heading to the kitchen for coffee. You’re officially anal, I noted wryly, yanking wrinkles from the fitted sheet of my king-sized bed. It was a distinct mark in an otherwise gradual transition; the older I got - and as responsibility proliferated - so increased my need for a fastidious home, until one day I couldn’t leave my bedroom if the sheets were mussed.

It was also around this time I realized sharing a bed with my husband was a form of domestic stupidity. We’d wake each other through the night and start the morning irrationally annoyed with one other. My husband agreed that though we’d receive some pearl-clutching around splitting the marital bed, there was no good reason to continue sharing one. He took nicely to his own double, unworried the yellow orb of his reading lamp would keep anyone awake, his snoring now contained within the walls of his own room.

Alone in my bed, gloriously unbothered, I began dreaming again. The most memorable, a house on a hill made entirely of purple flowers, its surface bristling with bees. I woke from the dream elated, positive it symbolized the imminent gifts of unbroken rest. As I made my bed, the first lines of a poem sprouted, pushing through the sleep-tilled plot of my forehead, and I furiously scribbled them down. At this rate, I’d have a collection within weeks, ready for editing. Your Muse is proper sleep, I realized, inexplicably ashamed.

A few weeks later, my daughter crawled into bed with me, terrorized by a nightmare involving a gymnasium of children thirsty for blood, her grubby toes probing for pockets of warmth behind my knees. I pulled her close and she wrapped her arms around my neck, falling asleep after a burble of unintelligible words and a single, great sob. The next morning, I stared at her placid face, the air in my bedroom marbled with early morning chill. If I wanted my dreams back, I’d have to kick her out. As if she could hear my thoughts, she grimaced in her sleep and reached a hand out, her face smoothing into stillness once it landed atop my ribcage.

We’d co-slept for much of her life, and getting her back into her bedroom after a stint in my bed was always a challenge. Though I never got quality rest in her company, having her close gave me a primitive sense of comfort, especially in the violet hours of the night when the anxious specters of the daylight hours began their haunts and mysterious noises proliferated in the dark. My daughter, on the other hand, slept deeply and vividly in my bed, a princess protected by a dragon who would immolate any threat, no matter how small. She raced through her dreams, full of strange vocalizations and spastic limbs, reminding me of a sleeping dog at a warm hearth, yipping and moaning, chasing a rabbit down the length of a stone wall.

Hyssop overtook every single one of your garden beds, my husband observed a few weeks later, after she’d crawled into my bed. He was staring into the backyard while his coffee brewed, his blue eyes lit like lamps, cheeks fresh as peonies.

I rubbed my eyelids and squinted at the flower beds.

I can’t bring myself to pull it, I said, yawning. The bees love it.