Theater of Shadows

Nights we could not sleep— summer insects singing in dry heat, short-circuiting the nerves— Grandma would light a lamp, at the center of our narrow room, whose clean conspiracy of light whispered to the tall blank walls, illuminating them suddenly like the canvas of a dream. Between the lamp and wall her arthritic wrists grew pliant as she molded and cast improbable animal shapes moving on the wordless screen: A blackbird, like a mynah, not a crow. A dark horse’s head that could but would not talk. An ashen rabbit (her elusive self) triggered in snow that a quivering touch (like death’s) sent scampering into the wings of that little theater of shadows that eased us into dreams.