Nightglow

Oh, today is a raw day. Not the November air outside, I mean; that's unseasonably, eerily soft and round, not the sort I was expecting that pokes you in the ribs through your jacket with its jagged, unfriendly edges. The rawness is in me. Though I've only spoken to a barista and a bookstore clerk so far today, murmured an excuse me to a woman and her latte as I bowed my head to pass, I suspect I may crack wide open when asked a question by a coworker who knows me. Or maybe I'll be fine. I honestly can't know until I open my mouth. Right now, a lack of sleep is casting a warm glow over Cobble Hill, even the looming L-shaped brick buildings that make up the Gowanus Houses, and I feel like crying just knowing that it's all here, and so am I, which means that these are, in some small way, my golden trees, my brownstones, my scaffolding. I like the days my insomnia makes me sentimental instead of straight up pissed. I know the halo around everything could be sleep deprivation induced hallucinations, but I don't care because it's pretty. For once, I don't mind wandering; I'm trying to decide how I'll gather my bearings and stuff them back inside my chest before I get to work. I have a little time to kill, so I stop at BookCourt and browse the new non-fiction until a particular book catches my attention. It's about insomnia; the jacket is covered with nearly invisible Z's that I know will glow in the dark tonight when it sits on my bedside table. Har-har, pretty hilarious. I buy it.

I took a half day today. It was planned and all, actually suggested by a coworker because she thought I'd need it, and I did. Without the pressure of an early alarm, I don't know why I couldn't sleep. Every Sunday night it's the same damn thing, my body fighting, my brain stuck in a loop, repeating the dumbest scraps of the day. The name of a woman I spoke to at work on Friday, but whom I've never met in person: Susan Westre. ("Soooo-zin Wehhh-struh." Why?) Lyrics to Christmas songs. A funny thing my friend said on Saturday. Fa-la-la-la-la. None of it matters. These tidbits, when arranged together, solve no mystery, unlock no secret code, because my life isn't mysterious. I don't have crippling money issues, my relationships are stable, my lovely boyfriend's breath goes in-out-in-out softly next to me, comforting and familiar. Strange how the brain is so complex that one part of it can wage war against the other, and still another part altogether is able to conceal the real reason. I once spent an entire night trying to remember the name of the band who sang that song "I Could Never Be Your Woman", thought I honestly and completely don't even care. (I had the answer right anyway: it's White Town, but those two words strung together had begun to sound so ridiculous with repetition that they'd completely lost their meaning.) Last night, as with every other unsuccessful night, I watched the inky purple shadow of the Brooklyn night (that's the darkest it ever gets) turn to grey around the edges of my blackout curtains, and then I put on my sleep mask. I've named it Skeeter, because personification has a tendency to make me less bitter. The hours between 12 and 8 become edgeless and gummy, sticking to each other and stretching like taffy, and in the morning it's like they never happened. Gummy eyes popping open before the alarm, I can't quite believe that I've just spent eight hours fighting with myself.