By Angela Townsend
“When I am awake, I am still with you.”
Psalm 139:18
I thought it meant the morning, “Rise and shine!” from the God of pancakes. Sleep is a trust walk with limp legs. Dawn comes, and the chair by the bedside is warm.
As God’s neurotic daughter, I heard this as good news. If God stood vigil, kissing my forehead, I would survive every ghost story.
“When I am awake, I am still with you.”
I thought it meant the twilight, “We’re in this together!” from the God of good cheer. Wee hours are bloated and stubborn. The True Friend comes, and a vigil becomes a sleepover.
As God’s itchy insomniac, I welcomed the company. No chamomile could confirm that I would not die a spinster, and melatonin melts in the heat of my angst. But if God scrolled through 2 a.m. with me, distraction could drowse into devotion.
I thought it meant I was never alone in the dark, and I was not wrong. But as God’s sleepiest starfish, I forgot the light.
“When I am awake, I am still with you.”
I am not often awake. But . . .
When I am awake, I hear my mother spill rhapsody, her cello laugh the high note of my day. Her eyebrows scrunch in conspiracy as she jokes and jousts with the ordinary. A story about her Roomba or last night’s rerun grabs the hand of my “hallelujah.” I am the daughter of a poet who prays for people at the self-checkout. I am awake.
When I am awake, I peek at angelic arithmetic. My diabetes has been God’s theater since I was nine. Docile blood glucose is as impossible as the hippopotamus. Synthetic insulin is a song for morning stars. My islet cells are prodigal curmudgeons whose Maker remains fond of them. I am the survivor of a saga sweeter than any simple story. I am awake.
When I am awake, I waltz among words. I was born to reread The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. I can hide in Gandalf’s beard and hold Anne Shirley’s kindred hand. Psalmists and prophets, poets and Pop-Tart boxes lavish me with language. I rappel down my story on exclamation-point ropes. I am a writer, hand drawn in the image of the Word. I am awake.
When I am awake, I step outside. The toadstools on the lawn make haste to make me laugh. The squirrels reenact La Boheme in the parking lot. The willow invites me through its bead curtain. Begonias and cicadas are too ridiculous to exist, yet here they are. The neighbor in the pineapple housedress, the dental hygienist who sings, and the deli man who calls me “dear lady” are too holy to exist, yet here they are. I am fearfully and wonderfully made, to live in a fearlessly wonderful world. I am awake.
“When I am awake, I am still with you.”
Why do I spend so much time sleeping?
Why are You so gentle with me? Why do You stay so near, even when I draw the blackout curtains and pretend day is night?
Were I in Your seat, I would be impatient. To give life, then see the child choose coma, would weary my heart. I would shake the tiny shoulders, threaten to withhold gooseberries and meteors, ask the ungrateful to keep vigil at least one waking hour. Could they not last one hour?
“When I am awake, I am still with you.”
You know we are flesh, and You kiss our foreheads. You will wait out the night. You will send dawns and noons and mirthful moons even when we choose our own gaudy neon. You will wipe away the salt and quench our thirst. We will meet at dawn.
“When I am awake, I am still with you.”
Angela Townsend works for a cat sanctuary, where she bears witness to mercy for all beings. She is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, seven-time Best of the Net nominee, and the 2024 winner of West Trade Review’s 704 Prize for Flash Fiction. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Chautauqua, Epiphany, Five Points, Indiana Review, The Normal School, Pleiades, SmokeLong Quarterly, Terrain, Under the Sun, and World Literature Today, among others. She graduated from Princeton Seminary and Vassar College, has lived with Type 1 diabetes for over 30 years, and laughs with her poet mother every morning.
