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We stand on the porch looking out into darkness, and beyond darkness to the other side of the Bay, as the wind rises and our nightgowns fill like sails of small boats being slowly carried out to sea.  

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We have fought against sleep for this moment, for this fragile hour of the night when the stars will begin falling from the Pleiades and my mother and I will watch them fall.

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She steps off into the darkness barefoot, into the wet grass and I try to follow, but a few steps beyond the house a black wave folds over me, pulls me under, holds me there not breathing.  

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My mother turns to me and stops.  She has forgotten how the darkness always frightened me, how I used to plead with her each night for the light to be left on, for the door to be left open, as she turned away.  

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But now she reaches through the darkness to pull me back and leads me by the hand to the end of the pier where we lie, side by side, listening to the slow pulse for the waves against the weathered wood.  

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Above us, the sky is full and deep and we watch as, one by one, the stars spin from darkness, a thin thread, holding us there in their momentary web of light.  

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