Spiders in My Bed

He had arrived a little earlier than usual that day. Perhaps it was just that his sleep had been shorter than expected, or that his body needed rest before he even realized it. Regardless, he now sat there, on the bench, alone. There was something strangely peaceful about it. The sun hung low over the treetops, casting a soft, muted light over the path and grass.

It wasn’t uncommon for Rosa to arrive a bit after him. But today felt different. She had usually been there first. With her scarf. With her book. With that little smile that said it was okay to be together without saying much.

He leaned back and felt his shoulders relax. His fingers automatically stroked the bench’s backrest, as if searching for an anchor where the wood met his skin. He had drunk the first cup of coffee at home. The second, the one he had considered bringing in a thermos, he left on the kitchen counter. Perhaps he had known, without realizing it, that this day needed something different from routine.

He hadn’t slept particularly well. Again. It had started after New Year’s, but he knew it went further back. It had always been easier to go to bed than to stay there. His head was full of spinning thoughts, not necessarily serious, just persistent—old memories, unfinished tasks, a sentence he should have responded to differently ten years ago. Everything seemed to have more time at night.

But he had started something new. Nothing big. Just a small routine he tried to stick to. Before breakfast—before the coffee and before the radio came on—he stood on the bathroom mat and did exercises. Stretched his arms toward the ceiling, bent sideways, rolled his shoulders. Bent forward carefully, breathed deeply. And finally: tried to stand on one leg, as long as he could. First the right. Then the left. Sometimes he managed only five seconds. Other days a bit more. But it gave a kind of dignity, he thought. To be able to face the day in balance, even if only for a few seconds.

He smiled to himself as he thought about it. It wasn’t a big deal. No one would film it. But it had become a small anchor. A quiet reminder that his body could still move. That he could still stand firm—at least long enough to feel alive.

Now I known why I can not sleep well. He smiled faintly to himself. Spiders in my bed, he thought. That’s what it was. Thoughts that crept out when the light was turned off. Small, trembling feelings that tickled the edge of consciousness and couldn’t be vacuumed away.

He looked out over the water. It lay still. A solitary duck drew circles on the surface, and the wind barely rustled through the reeds. It struck him how quiet it was when he didn’t talk to anyone. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the silence. It was more that he didn’t always know what to fill it with.

He found himself thinking of her. Not Rosa. Not now. But her.

“Hanne,” he said softly. Just the name.

Four years. It wasn’t dramatic. Not anymore. The grief had gone from being a storm to a low, steady sound. Like an old fan. You know it’s there, but you no longer react to the noise.

People rarely asked about her now. And he almost never mentioned her. Not because he didn’t want to, but because it required something—an opening, an occasion, a courage. But here, now, in this morning sun, alone on the bench, he could say her name aloud without having to explain anything.

“You would have hated these nights,” he said into the air. “You, who always slept like a rock. And I, who lay awake and listened to you breathe.”

He leaned forward slightly, elbows on his knees, and looked down at his hands. They were more fragile now. More transparent. But they still carried memories. Still warmth.

There was a faint crunch behind him, and he turned. Rosa came walking with determined, but slightly shorter steps than usual. She had her scarf tied like a headband and a small paper bag in her hand.

“Sorry,” she said before she reached him. “Bus connections are like my mood these days. Unreliable and always late.”

“I haven’t been here long,” he said, standing up to give her space, even though it wasn’t necessary.

She sat down, exhaled.

“You look thoughtful. Are you pondering the end of the world, or what it takes to boil an egg just right?”

“Something in between, perhaps. I was thinking about Hanne.”

She nodded, not hesitantly, but calmly. As if the name had been there all along, just waiting to be spoken aloud.

“Your wife?”

“Yes. It’s four years now. Today, actually.”

Rosa didn’t say anything immediately. She let it hang in the air between them. The kind of silence that isn’t heavy, just honest.

“I didn’t know that,” she said finally.

“Not many do. I don’t mention it often.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s as if the grief became something private. Not secret, just… quiet.”

“I understand. I had such grief once. Not after someone who died, but after someone who just disappeared. The friendship died, and no one talked about it.”

“That can hurt just as much.”

“Yes.”

He looked at her. Rosa had something in her gaze—a presence without filling the room with herself.

“What was she like?” she asked.

He smiled. “Quieter than me. And at the same time, much clearer. She had a gaze that could see right through you. But also a calm. When she held my hand, we didn’t need to say anything.”

“Such calm is rare.”

“Yes. And when it’s gone, it’s like having to learn to breathe anew.”

Rosa was silent for a moment.

“I didn’t sleep last night,” she said suddenly. “Maybe it’s contagious.”

“Spiders in the bed?”

She looked at him and laughed.

“Yes. Thoughts that creep forward and refuse to be ignored. I wish I could turn off the light in my head and not just in the room.”

“I know. It’s strange how things that don’t bother us during the day suddenly become scary at three o’clock.”

“I found an old letter last night. From my daughter. Written many years ago. I had forgotten it, but there it was. Her words hit me as if I read them for the first time.”

“What did it say?”

“That she missed me, even when I was there.”

He said nothing. It wasn’t time for answers. Just for presence.

“I think I tried so hard to be a good mother that I became a busy mother instead. She was there, but I was always on my way elsewhere.”

“Maybe we all do that,” he said quietly. “Try to catch up with everything and forget that the most important things happen in the in-between moments.”

He leaned back slightly, stroked his hand over his thigh as if the words had awakened something physical in him.

“I worked as an engineer, you know. In the municipality for many years, and later on projects that took me around the country. It was exciting at first. To come to new places, see new solutions, meet people with completely different perspectives than mine.”

Rosa looked at him, nodded slowly, encouragingly.

“But eventually, it became a habit. A rhythm I didn’t question. Meetings, reports, travels. I got used to hotel pillows and small cartons of orange juice. I learned to pack my suitcase without thinking. And I stopped noticing the longing at home before it became a kind of background noise.”

“Did it become lonely?”

“Not then. Then I called it structure. I liked knowing what I was supposed to do. But then, when everything stopped after Hanne died… then came the silence. And then I felt how tired I really had been. Not in the body. In the head. In the heart.”

He laughed briefly, without joy.

“I had been awake so long, to use a phrase I heard recently, that my legs were about to give out. Not literally. But inside.”

“It often strikes me,” said Rosa after a pause, “that it’s only when the pace slows down that we feel what we’ve been carrying. And who we perhaps haven’t had time to be.”

He turned his gaze away, out toward the pond.

“I wish I had come home earlier more often. Not to do anything big. Just to be there. To leave the light on and know that someone was waiting.”

She didn’t look at him when she answered.

“Maybe that’s what we’re doing now. Coming home in a different way.”

He looked at her. Small lines by her eyes, the calm way she rested her hands in her lap. She was present in a way that didn’t demand the room but filled it.

“Maybe,” he said.

She nodded, pulled the scarf a bit tighter around her.

“I say I like being alone, and I do. But some nights… some nights it feels like the whole room is waiting for someone who never comes.”

“Yes.”

They sat like that for a while. The park woke more to life around them. A kindergarten group passed with reflective vests and giggles. A dog made a surprising leap after a leaf in the wind.

“You know what I miss?” he asked. “Not just her. But the light from the bedroom when I came home. That light that said: ‘You’re expected here.’”

Rosa looked at him. Her eyes were warm, but not sentimental.

“I leave the light on,” she said quietly.

He looked at her. And smiled. Not much. Just the smile that comes when you realize you’ve just been seen.

“And I knock,” he replied.

They continued to sit. Not because they had to. But because the bench, just today, was the place they both had needed to come to. And because sometimes it’s enough to sit in the same silence without having to do anything about it.

⸻

This is my fifth short story in a serie of 30 stories.