Sleep Like a thief

I don’t really sleep these days.

Well, sometimes I do.  And when that happens, I sleep like a thief, snatching here and there at beautiful things, and holding them in my mind, until the dreams turn dark, and I am awake again.  This morning, I woke at 3:30 am, and now it’s 7 am, and I am writing while the soft snores of the man who is trying to put me back together tumble from the next room. 

We share a bedsit, and in my absent-minded need for coffee, I press the machine into life. It is more deafening than the silence. I turn quickly and unnecessarily, protective of the solitute, but he stays motionless. Perhaps it’s just my mind overthinking it.  

It’s been eighteen months since I left. Eighteen long months. We don’t have anywhere to live, apart from here, and it’s small, but safe. Sometimes I dream that we will be like other people. Smile at dinner parties and mean it, coo over other couples’ children and marvel at the ridiculously complicated technology of the pram. Give supportive nods and commiserate over their lack of sleep and the damage to their social lives. Perhaps we would have new cars and walk into the show room like we belonged there. Driving our new purchases home, only to leave them on the driveway so we can polish them in our dressing gowns. That line of thought always makes me smile, I wasn’t like that before all this, and now for some reason it seems to be all I can think about. The comfort of not knowing that people can be cruel. 

Generally, I like the weekend, or perhaps just the thought of a weekend. It sits alongside the cars and prams, as a notion of something that should be savoured and waited for. But when it arrives, it just sits there, like a seagull waiting for a moment to steal a chip. Saturday, it transpires, is just a day that follows Friday; it brings no extra advantage. Still, somewhere, some part of me whispers, expect that one day – it might.

Today, though, it’s windy, the sky is grey, and the silence is loud. I’m sitting in front of the computer, and the cursor blinks at me expectantly. I sit and watch it. It looks like a clock sound, and I can’t stand to hear it.