Something needs attending to. Whatever happens in the moment between sleep and waking it takes me up and out of sleep and sits me on the side of the bed hunched over, swaying. Coursing through me a wakening and a broadening like an animal sense taking over and blooming outward. It’s night and I’m safe. It doesn’t matter that a bipolar needs the sleep, I don’t this time.

Something needs attending to.

Dudes are walking by the window drunk, calling to each other. Are you kidding? And dopplaring into the dead of night. Fool myself — it’s not the dead of night, it never is. Brightening somewhere for someone else, some impossible people in some impossibly other place. So sitting on the edge of the bed, swaying, kind of awake. I got to get up because come morning everything’s going to be different and I won’t like it. This is my life here, now. The morning’s so pleasantly far away its almost unendurable. Putting off living. This is the great stretch of freedom.