there are times that walk from you, like some passing afternoon

i spent a drawn-out eternity of a Sunday afternoon lying flat on the tile floor of our home because the heat was too great to be anywhere else with much comfort. five of us laid there, half naked in our skirts and shorts and bras, allowing as much of our skin to be in contact with the shiny, cool tile. and when the tile grew warm from our touch, we’d peel up and drag ourselves over twelve inches to get to another patch of cool.

the majority of the afternoon, the TV was tuned to a soap opera in Spanish that i hate. so i read my book and went in and out of sleep. Ali, the eight year old boy i live with, played with his marbles on the tile floor. every time he dropped one, it made a loud tap and i could feel its gentle shake reverberate across the hard floor. the sound woke me up several times, and when it did, i peeled myself up, inched over and fell into thin sleep again.

in a year or in five years or in twenty, i will lie down somewhere more comfortable—cushioned, cool, insulated from the noises of something this hard. but i hope that even then the small knocks of daily life here will still reverberate inside of me and keep me awake for a lifetime of being down where other people are.