Sometimes I think there cannot possibly be a lonelier collection of hours than those that tick away lethargically in the still of the black night, when only the distant sound of a lone car engine can maybe be heard as I’m lying in bed, fully awake.  Sometimes I feel like I must be the only one aware of what 3:17 looks like when it appears on the face of my clock and I see it when I am trying to flip my pillow so it will feel cool against my cheek once again.

When you are not a great sleeper, you become cued in to everything else you’re not so good at doing.  In the deadness of the night, when you look outside and can see darkened homes and only your home is lit up and you’ve even turned on your coffee machine and you can hear it begin to whir to life, it’s hard not to take yourself to task for the other things you have failed at besides the art of an almost unconscious slumber.  It’s in those pre-pre-dawn hours that I think about the people I might have hurt along the way and the tasks I’ve allowed to go uncompleted and the fears I won’t acknowledge once the sun rises high in the sky and the rest of the world joins me in the day.