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Topic: Satisfied (10/11/04)
TITLE: When You Need a Midnight Snack By Autumn Conley 10/12/04 |
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The kitchen was dark and quiet, except for those little mystery noises you always think you hear when you wander around a dark room searching for the light switch. The refrigerator stood there, humming as if it were fast asleep. I envied it. But it wasn’t the refrigerator I sought. The cookie jar sat and looked at me the way any porcelain teddy bear with a removable head would look at you in the dark. But I wasn’t looking for Oreos™ just now. The coffee pot stood still on the table, smelling vaguely of its caffeinated aroma, as it was a frequent visitor to our household. But caffeine was the enemy at 1:13 a.m. The pantry loomed there, daring me to open its doors, but chips and crackers and tea and little plastic cups of applesauce were not going to answer my hunger at this late hour.
So I wandered through the kitchen, stumbling over my daughter’s doll and a divorced shoe who had no idea where its mate was, and I came to the front room. It was darker in here, but strangely more silent while the TV slept and the videogames napped and the phone recharged itself in the quietness. I opened the drawer of the end table furthest from the sofa, and there it was. It wasn’t dusty, but it wasn’t nearly used enough. I picked it up and suddenly felt that sense of relief you would feel when the fuel light in your car is blinking and you come across a gas station after miles of driving on fumes. I opened it and inhaled its words. And the nightmare seemed so far away in this midnight feast of reassurance and hope wafting off of the holy pages into my hungering spirit. And it satisfied me as it always did, quenching a hunger that dwelled deeper than appetite. I devoured the words, gently closed its thin red print pages, and placed it back in its drawer as it nourished me and lullabied me back to a sleep that wouldn’t be tainted with nightmarish fears again.