And so it is like this: 4:30 in the morning and I have shoved at insomnia for an hour before admitting it won. Lying in the dark, trying not to toss and turn, playing the trick my grandmother taught me of counting all the body parts and how they were sleepy, unable to focus on a single muscle without also cataloging every injury, every insult.
Your toes are sleepy, I tell myself. Toes, you are very sleepy! And also he had no business telling me I was irresponsible for not finishing the project; we were moving across the country the next week and I think it was unreasonable to expect a seventh grader to make up sentences for 20 vocabulary words when her family is nearly off its hinges.
Insteps, you are sleepy; stay still and stop twitching. Think long relaxing thoughts! And Dennis standing at the foot of the bed and he's going to fucking kill me, rip me apart, and so again I am sleeping on the couch in the office where I work.
Heels, to heel. And the place where I passed out on the floor of the bathroom, cracking my head against the tiles, and they told me it couldn't be a gas leak because gas smells bad.
I'm not up to my knees, I'm not even at the fidgety parts yet, and why do I store so much that makes me sad, and what is it that wakes me at three in the morning and says let's think about all the bad places you've left instead of let's think of all the good places you went to.
Listen, I keep everything. I remember everything. On good days I am able to say that I got to live with a beautiful woman who made paper by hand and who had all of Leonard Cohen's recordings on reel-to-reel tapes that were copies of copies and scratchy from being loved so much; that my boss went out and got me McDonald's for breakfast and told me I was radiant even with office couch creases on my cheeks; that California turned out pretty well. But this month has been a month of sleeplessness, and remembering all the bad places I've slept is not the worst catalog I've got, but none of my catalogs are all roses either. Be patient with me. I know good things and I'll tell you them soon.
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