The Hand on His Back
By daylight, Daniel knew which doors in the house caught in wet weather and how Anja liked her coffee. He remembered the dog's medicine and warmed her car when frost covered the windscreen. At night he returned to places he would not describe over breakfast. Some belonged to fights he had survived. Others assembled themselves from things he regretted, things he feared, arguments he still carried after everyone else had gone home. The rooms changed, but someone was always behind him, and something was always coming through the door. He had to keep it from reaching them.
In those dreams he fought with everything he had. He braced his shoulder against splintering wood, dragged people beneath windows, went back into corridors where he could no longer see the floor. He could feel each blow and the terrible weight of being the last person standing between danger and someone smaller. Beside him, Anja heard none of that battle. She heard a low whimper. Sometimes his fingers tightened around the sheet. Sometimes the sound rose into a frightened, unfinished plea. The man fighting so fiercely inside his sleep could scarcely make a word reach the bedroom.
At first she tried to bring him out of it. She called his name, touched his shoulder, told him he was dreaming. He would wake with his breath already running ahead of him, searching the room before he recognized the wardrobe, the window, her face. Then came his apology and her reassurance, both exhausted by a conversation neither knew how to finish. One morning he stayed at the kitchen table after the cups were empty. He told her that in the dreams he was trying to protect people. He never knew whether he had managed it. Anja listened without asking him to account for every person or every fight.
The next time his whimper reached her, she turned toward him. He lay facing the window, his back rigid beneath his shirt. She rested her hand there lightly, between his shoulder blades. She did not call him up into the room or shake him free of what he was seeing. In his dream, Daniel was holding a doorway against a weight that would not relent. Then he felt warmth through his shirt. For a moment he could hear rain beyond the fighting. His breathing slowed beneath her hand. When morning came, he remembered the doorway, but he could also remember leaving it.
It happened unevenly. There were nights when he slept through, nights when a small sound passed and settled, and nights when the old struggle returned. Anja learned that she could lie beside him without demanding an explanation in the dark. Daniel began telling her more when they were awake: a memory while washing dishes, a fear admitted on a walk, the anger he sometimes mistook for something he had to carry alone. She told him when she was tired, too. They made room for that. Their ordinary life grew around the difficult hours, in cups brought upstairs and questions neither hurried to answer.
Over the following months, the nightmares came less often. His past remained his past; some mornings still required patience. But Anja no longer lay beside a battle she could only interrupt. When she heard him, she turned and offered the quiet weight of her hand. Sometimes Daniel slept on until sunlight reached the curtains. Sometimes he woke gently and found her already there. On one such morning he caught her hand before she could withdraw it and held it against his back a little longer. Neither spoke. Downstairs, the dog was waiting, and the kettle was still cold. They could leave both for another minute.
Continue to the lyrics