Only looking where it is dark

Much later, in her room, Dabney opened her eyes. Perhaps she had only just gone to sleep, but the silver night woke her--the night so deep-advanced toward day that she seemed to breathe in a well, drenched with the whiteness of an hour that astonished her. It hurt her to lift her hand and touch her forehead, for all seemed to be tenderness now, the night like herself, breathless and yet serene, unlooked-on. The daring of morning light impending would have to strike her when it reached her--not yet. The window invited her to see--her window. She got out of bed (her flimsy dress like a sleeping moth clung to the chair) and the whole leafy structure of the outside seemed agitated and rustled, the shadows darted like birds. The gigantic sky radiant as water ran over the earth and around it. The old moon in the west and the planets of morning streamed their light. She wondered if she would ever know . . . the constellations . . . The birds all slept. (The morning dove that cried the latest must sleep the deepest of all.) What could she know? But she could see a single leaf on a willow tree as far as the bayou's edge, such clarity as there was in everything. The cotton like the rolling breath of sleep overflowed the fields. Out onto it, if she were married, she would walk now--her bare foot touch at the night's hour, firmly too, a woman's serious foot. She would walk on the clear night--angels, though, did that--tread it with love not this lonely, never this lonely, for under her foot would offer the roof, the chimney, the window of her husband, the solid house. Draw me in, she whispered, draw me in--open the window like my window, I am still only looking where it is dark.

~ Eudora Welty, Delta Wedding