Like The Night
Violet stared down at a printed copy of the poem on her bed while
sitting criss-cross applesauce style. Water from her hair dropped onto
the line about a “mind at peace with all below.” Maybe she could train
herself to have a photographic memory. She blinked hard as she reread
every word.
She. Walks. In. Beauty. Like. The. Night. Of. Cloudless. Climes.
And.
This wasn’t working and her eyelids felt heavy.
Whiskers, a fat brown cat shimmied his way into Violet’s bedroom.
He leapt onto the bed, sat himself on Lord Byron’s masterpiece, and
meowed for attention.
“Shhhh,” Violet whispered. “You’ll wake everybody up.”
She stroked his purring head and scratched behind his twitchy ears.
Violet mostly loved Whiskers out of pity and childhood nostalgia. She
always felt remorseful for letting her parents give him such a dumb
name. She had a list going of better options: Oscar, Artemis, Sebastian,
Jasper, Simon, Edgar, Osmund, Dutch, Harold.
“I now pronounce thee Lord Byron,” Violet whispered in a dreadful attempt at a British accent.Whiskers had a look of apathy in his
eyes. He plopped onto the floor and sauntered away in search of better
company.
Violet leaned on to her pillow and stared at the crumpled poem
with one eye open.
“She walks in blah blah like the blah blah.”
Eighteen lines, one hundred and nineteen words. She could remember if she stayed awake for just a while longer. Violet started to remember unpleasant things. She hoped the girl from the poem wasn’t walking
alone. Maybe Lord Byron was a perv.
Violet’s wet hair formed a dense puddle on her pillow, damp and
sticky. The inside of her head was humid, thick with steam and ugly
thoughts swirling around her brain canals. She imagined clouds rolling
in behind her face and through her skull to block the bad thing. She
remembered the types of clouds from fifth grade science. Stratus, cumulus, cirrus, stratocumulus, nimbostratus, cirrocumulous. Cloudless
climes and starry skies. How did the third line of the poem start? Violet’s
consciousness came in waves. Pulling in, pushing out. The clock told
her she had five more hours until school.
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