Don'T Go Back To Sleep

I asked myself why? Why 3 in the morning? At 2.59 A.M. I was inside a dream, now I am inside a life. I will have to go to the bathroom, I return to my tussled bed. Words fall into my mind: “Don’t go back to sleep.” I tell myself these are remembered words Jalal ad-Din Rumi wrote them – when? Why, he wrote them at 3 in the morning! Now it’s 3.15 I ask myself ‘Where did the time go, where did I go?’ 16 minutes ago I was a dream, dreaming a dream, Now I am a time-traveler and a long dead mystic reads my mind by the light of his heart. Don’t go back to sleep. Stay in the silence, listen. There is a reason you wake up at a certain time in the early morning, it could be 2, 3 or 4 o’clock it is not just a full bladder, no this is the time that has been set aside for you, a time when time dances away from the clock, a space for you to listen within. A time to ask of yourself. Stay awhile, don’t go back to sleep.