Flash Non-Fiction: "The Night Game"

The Night Game

By Sarah Young

The sound of my failure rings through the dark air once more as I’ve been spotted by the guard. The alarm wails, breaking the silence, and forcing me upright. The search lights that hit me are big, teary-eyed, crystal blue, and filled with a tired longing. They are fixated right on my eyes, which are bloodshot, puffy, and filled with defeat. I stand up to face my keeper. She reaches out her tiny arms to me, forgiving me once more for my attempted escape. I bend down, pick her up, and hold her close—my shoulder soaking up her tears. I begin to sway back and forth in a rhythm I never knew I had before this new life. It is the dance we have done seven times already this night, and will probably do seven more times before dawn. Tonight is not the night I escape my exhaustion. It is not the night you will sleep on your own. But that night will come one day, and irrationally, I will miss this little nighttime game we play.

The days and nights are fleeting, like watching a Green Flash at sunset. They come and go with weighted awe, and a speed so swift I can hardly stop to relish each moment. The colloquialisms are all true, but I want our story to fly off the pages, bound to be extraordinary. Before I know it, you are running off to your first day of school—your shoes on the wrong feet, so filled with pride and confidence. Someone else teaches you new things today. Other people enter our story, and I relinquish part of my soul to the world.

You tell me you hate me for the first time. The catalyst, a mundane spat, is inconsequential. You are a rabbit pretending to be a bear—testing your boundaries, and testing me. I know better, but your words still burn like venom in my heart. You are growing up, and the pages of our book seem to be flipping wildly in the wind. Be still the winds of time. I want to be back in your little room, where time slows down. Swaying back and forth with you, dancing our dance, and playing our nighttime game. That is where we dream up our stories—inextricably woven together in harmony.

You still ask me to snuggle with you until you fall asleep, though you no longer cry on my shoulders. You are too big to sway back and forth now; instead I gently rub your back. We read The Chronicles of Narnia aloud until my voice goes horse, both of us wanting to read more still. I turn out the light, and you break the silence. You ask a million questions in the dark. How does DNA work? Who was Hercules? The glow in the dark stars on your ceiling grow dim as we talk into the night. We lay next to each other, your feet reaching closer to mine with each precious rotation around the sun. How has another year passed already? I silently beam with pride as I kiss the top of your head. The exhaustion of sleepless nights passed long ago, replaced by the exhaustion of days rushed by. And I pray we are bound together in this game forever.