Stumbling through the dark

Sketch is a clock. At 4 a.m., give or take, he gets me up. I feed him, after which I take him outside. Back inside, he runs back to bed on the bedroom chair, and I look at the morning SF Chronicle on my Fire.

An hour or so later, I'm ready to grab a few more winks myself. I turn off the kitchen light. And the adventure begins.

The house is pitch dark. I have a simple task, to walk from the kitchen to the bedroom, something I've done a zillion times. Why do I hesitate?

Because I know this is a dangerous journey. I always bump into furniture. Always. This has become a metaphor for my old age, stumbling through a familiar landscape, lost anyway, bumping into things, expecting to fall at any minute.