Sleepless Stars
Sleepless Stars
Emily Lenzen
It is a late night of insomnia, and I turn over yet again in an attempt to make myself comfortable on this caved-in mattress I call a bed. But the inability to sleep isn’t due to my cheap-ass ways but, instead, because my mind is awake, racing without a pit stop to change out its tires.
Years ago, I learned not to count sheep as it only led to disappointment. I have yet to fall asleep after this, even after numbering off a hundred.
After a while, I need to remove the batteries from the analog clocks so their ticking doesn’t fill my mind with the anxiety that time gives me almost each night. I need to turn the alarm around so I don’t realize the amount of time I’ve been lying awake in the dark, shadow-filled room, accompanied only by the subtle noise coming from the city beyond the walls of my home.
I sigh with frustration as I contort my body back to face the wall, aggressively turning my clock to see how much time I’ve spent in this insomniac prison, watching random items that I had next to my clock scatter as I look back to the time. In neon letters, I feel my stomach drop with dread as I watch the time switch over from 3:39 am to 3:40 am, vexation raging inside of me as I wish for a sliver of sleep. I sit up, hanging my legs over the bed, unconsciously hunching over, ignoring any etiquette I learned when I was younger. I stare into the darkness, imagining anything and everything to keep myself busy, thinking back to all the activities I could do to keep myself sane. Mentally, I create another tally mark amongst the significant number of others that were already present from previous sleepless nights.