Sleep Rituals
by Howie Good

Tonight, like most nights, she goes to bed first, and he stays up to test the machine, standing at the kitchen counter, where the light is good and no one can see him from the street. He pops off the lid using gentle thumb pressure. Inside, heating coils glow like the ribs of a starving dog, God rolls dice that have no spots, a mare with a burning mane screams in terror. He bends at the waist for a closer look. After a moment’s argument with himself, he plunges his hand into the smoke. It feels cold, and a spiderweb of scaffolding begins to rise around the dark castle of a line of mad kings. He weeps as if it were his own heart he was dismantling. Soon he’ll be tired enough to sleep, and when she awakes before the alarm, the dawn will be full of birdsong and the birdsong, as sometimes happens, full of primitive grief.

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