sleep walk

The insomnia that had plagued him for the last several nights had returned. It was not so much that his body couldn’t sleep as much as it was that was that his mind wouldn’t allow him to calm himself. He rose from the bed and slipped on his shoes. He had decided to go for a walk in the night air, hoping that a chance to let his mind and body have a bit of a work out would do him good. He slipped out the front door, closing it silently behind him. The highway was dark; he had only the street below his feet and the moon to guide him down the road. It seemed desolate, every household was dark, the souls behind the doors finding solace in sleep, in dreams, in life, and he continued on. He allowed both his mind and his feet to wander on. He looked down at his feet they glowed an odd orange, he looked about himself and saw that he was under a fading light, he must have walked nearly a mile, and he was at the old grave yard suddenly. He looked over the fence and saw the headstones, their granite shone under the light of the street lamp. He saw a row of graves in the back, one of the head stones had been tipped over. He found a small gap in the chain link fence, he ducked under it and made his way over to the back row he had seen from the road, he slipped in between the graves, stepping on graves had always bothered him, he never could really explain why that was but he made his way back. He went to the back right corner, the headstone read Marie West, she died in 1963 he thought to him self. He put his hand on top of the headstone and pulled, the granite was heavy, too heavy for him to pull up, he braced his back and slipped both hands on both sides and pulled, the heavy headstone slowly stood. He tipped it back onto the pedestal, and then pushed his foot against the side and put it back into place, he brushed the dirt from the stone and mad his way back towards the road, in the corner of his eye he saw another that had been knocked over, this one was a child’s, he pulled with all he had and it slid back onto the stand that held it. The earth below it had been moved had been displaced and it slid again forward, so it edged it, bit by bit back to behind the stand so that it was leveraged against it and it stood again. He stopped by the grave a moment, considered if perhaps he should pray or something, he smiled instead and brushed this one too free from dirt and left through the gap in the chain link. He walked back down the road towards the silent house that awaited him, in the moonlight he was only a specter a shadow if even that. His lips twisted up at the ends into a smirk, he strolled along silently through the sleeping neighborhood until he found himself back on his own doorstep. He opened the door and silent as a church mouse he slipped into the sleeping home that had been opened to him and quietly made his way back to the bed that awaited him. He pulled back the covers and crawled in, the closed his eyes and smiled. He hadn’t smiled like that in longer than he’d cared to remember. He lay his head into the pillows, and not a thought ran through his head, he slept, lost in a deep sleep he had forgotten was possible, and that night he dreamt, oh of nothing fantastic or stupendously amazing, just a simple peaceful little dream but it was his and he would come for years and years to come to love that dream and look back on it fondly, for that night at the very least… he could sleep, and he was oh so thankful for it.