Unfinished business

Last night I lay on the floor as the thunder rolled through me. The whole house shook to its roar, an energy of other proportions.

This morning I watch the rain ease off after a nightlong solid dump. Those clouds just got to be exhausted now. There’ll be flooding around these parts today, I’m sure.

And the cat buries her face in my arm, clawing me gently, a suckling kitten grown old. I bite my fingernails, the cat suckles: what is the difference? Acting out unfinished childhoods.

Childhood is never finished. Where there is innocence there are signs of the child, and underlying all of this is a profound innocence. It is inescapable, try as we might to deny it.

Manifestations of fear would try to drive us away from our innocence. And who is it that fears? Who is afraid of the dark? Of monsters under the bed? Of spiders and mice and other creepy-crawlies? It is the child. Always the innocent child.