Sleepless

A raw quiet stretches like a membrane across the night. Pulled tight it waits to amplify the slightest sound. Each passing minute dials up the volume of a nerve strung to snare the powdery whispers of a moth or the faint ticking wheezed out of an old wristwatch kept beside the bed. Others sneak the outskirts, undeciphered, just out of reach of being named. Then in time thoughts take over and chatter in an aimless dialogue of the brain. The past is replayed again and again in regrets or unhealed shame or bent to shape itself another way as if a choice was had to change what happened into what should have been. Or the mind stammers, afraid, paused on the lip of what's to come, a dull dread of something unshaped palling over the days ahead, or plucks some planned event for it to fill with imagined pleasure of what might be. A distant siren tunnels the dark with its urgent wail then thins to silence. Unease lingers in its wake and slowly tightens until all distills to just the sound of a muffled pulse beating in the chambers of an ear. One day it will stop.