It can be as hard to hate a child as it can to hate someone we see sleeping.
With their eyes closed and their features relaxed and defenceless,
sleepers invite care and a kind of love
- so much so that it is embarrassing
to gaze at length at a person asleep
beside us on a train or plane.
Their face prompts us to an intimacy
which throws into question
the edifice of civilised indifference
on which ordinary communal relations are built.
But there is no such thing as a stranger
and
Love has no sleep switch
and
Love has no OFF switch
*
