sleep

It doesn't often occur you watch someone sleep, not least because 'watching someone sleep' now has the unfortunate association with certain pale and glittery not-young man who has a penchant for being abusively over-protective. But sleep does something to people - not the sleep of bad dreams, running away or drifting lost at sea - but an ordinary, healthy sleep, or even the quiet drifting into oblivion of an exhausted person. Hands folded over waist, bare feet propped on a table, sleep's gentle hand smoothing away forehead worry lines. There's a certain enforced peacefulness, silence, vulnerability even. One becomes like a small child again, cradled in sleep and lost to the world.