I awaken into the lost hour

Ping and creak of a bed spring, and my eyes are open. The window is unveiled and dark. I blink an echolocation to the room and it comes back Glasgow. It comes back Partick. It comes back solitary to this bed where I lie.
I check my watch, then burn the bright candles of my mobile. There is an hour missing between my wrist and the cyberworld. I blink an echolocation and slip into this lost hour.

The downstair's buzzer goes. So I rise to the window to see. It goes again, impatient and crude. Looking down to the street there is no-one there at the front door. There is, though, a fox afoot in the night on the opposite pavement. It pants a breath of hot funk, its slack tongue sodden with the taste of night. It knows I can see it, but does not shift its gaze from its nocturnal purpose. I follow its strides desperate for it to turn and look at me.

A noise behind. My phone is ringing. I pick it up and it is my Granny. She is saying something, although it echoes in space and is difficult to hear. Her words are lost in the white noise of orbiting satellites and the bounce of communication towers. The white noise builds and becomes the sound of the ocean.
It is the Indian Ocean alright, and I am in a dark room with the children. They are very young, my son is still a baby. You are not there, so I go to find you. You sit on a chair, knees drawn up tight like a rock against the waves. You stare out into the boom of the ocean crashing towards you. You know I can see you but you don't turn, your thoughts are in a tumult of breaking and undertow. You have found yourself trying to remain solid as a world you never wanted comes at you with the force of the bright moon.

Another creak piercing and everywhere. You are in bed beside me and sleep a sleep deep and clean. The landscape of your dreaming smooth and calm across your face. The creak is that of a cricket trapped in the cool marble of our Spanish home. I rise to try and locate its echo. I wander among the rooms and hallways. The children sleep too. There is only me lost in the night trying to locate the high pitched creak creak by its echo somewhere in the dark of home. When I think I am close it moves. Then, upon the stair I hear it clear..

creak and ping and I open my eyes. I blink an echolocation to the room. It is Sunday. I have travelled the lost hour. I change my watch to the correct time. I rise and the children are there still asleep. The echo of their in-breath answered in the out-. We are all here at home, I have found them.