Awake
I could not sleep last night. Two AM, three AM, four ... hours passed and my eyes were heavy and I could not sleep. The same thoughts kept rolling through my head. It was not the thinking that kept me awake, but rather that sleep left an absence in me that only large thoughts could fill.
Sometimes I'd begin to dream, my eyes partially open, aware that I was both awake and dreaming. I dreamt that I'd hung some laundry on chairs outside my open bedroom window, a room that was and was not my apartment, and that some strange guy tried to steal my bra and then lied about it to my face. I took it back from him and locked the door, and stood against the wall while he and his friends pounded on the door, hoping that they weren't smart enough to see my reflection in the mirror.
A bit after six AM, a bird started singing outside my window. For months I've been awake at seven in the morning, awake before the sun is close to rising, and yet this is the first time I can remember hearing a bird sing since fall. The sky was becoming blue.
