The Hours Between

It was 1am and my eyes shot open, like an abrupt jack-in-the-box.

It is crazy because at first my brain carried on like it had been well rested, as if sleep had been eternal and time to wake was now.

Then I looked at the time... I had been asleep for a fingerful of time.

And then I tried to sleep.

Never had I seen time go so fast yet felt it move so slow.

I had tried several sleep meditation apps, listened to sleep history podcasts, smoked a cone or four, and still not one part of me was going to sleep, though my inner voice was insistent on trying.

I rolled over, checked my phone. 2:03am.

Rolled back, stretched out, arms cuddling into my pillow, face buried in silk sheets. My eyes closed...

Moments later, open again. Like magic made them.

Time truly felt longer. But no. It was 2:04.

Frustrating. My restless body and my mind could not agree how to proceed.

After fighting with myself, my body twitching, my brain hosting a near-on staff meeting in my skull, I looked back at the time, feeling like a good hour had passed.

Still 2:04am.

Crickets on a flipping cracker. This is not happening.

I did the whole “breathe in for four, hold for seven, out for eight” thing.

I listened to another sleep meditation app that sounded like it was voiced by a man who had definitely never slept in his life. He sounded like a cult leader. I felt seconds away from drinking Kool-Aid and becoming the newest member of Before the Wake.

So I switched to a history podcast.

The topic was royal Egyptian rituals and the hygiene of the medieval era.

There was even a segment on the oh-so-very interesting “relief for hysteria.”

His voice was deep and peaceful, like he was there beside me, tucking my hair behind my ear, stroking my face as I safely slept.

But then came the ads.

All of a sudden, ten times louder than the actual podcast.

Advertisements about nothing. Repetitive, boring, over-the-top loud advertisements.

Some of them were just head-shakeable nonsense written for the gullible and lazy.

It started its own separate rant in my head.

I could not continue. I stopped it mid-sentence, mid-stroke, mid-safety.

I smoked a cone. Then another. Then two more.

Cone one was hopeful. Cone two was philosophical. Cone three was hungry. Cone four was just greedy.

I became a sugar-seeking missile, convinced that sleep was a myth invented by mattress companies.

So now it is 3am and I sigh. I huff dramatically.

I throw my legs over the bed like I just got pulled into the war of insomnia and existential dread.

I amp myself up to go to the gym.

I do not mind it this early. Less people. More music.

I dance and wiggle around while on the cardio.

The game is: do not fall off the treadmill.

Bonus points if you can lip-sync to guilty pleasures or early 2000s club remixes while doing incline sprints.

But then the rain came.

And it poured.

Heavy.

Like the sky was grieving something.

Naturally, it turned me off a little.

I put my tights on anyway, in preparation.

Threw my pre-workout in the freezer for a hot second because I like it icy and chilled.

Started warming by the fire and threw on YouTube, Karen’s and Darren’s, obviously.

Nothing is quite as entertaining as entitled people acting entitled while being ironically contradictory and hypocritical.

I do love human behaviour.

The contradictions. The performative empathy.

The way people say “literally” when they mean “not at all.”

The way language evolves, sometimes beautifully, sometimes like a toddler with scissors.

We shorten everything. We rename things.

We say “fire” when we mean “hot.”

It is chaotic. And even further from poetry or just words and sense.

I opened the get-well treat pack I made for Dash yesterday.

His favourite hokey pokey chocolate, which I ate.

Honey tea. Juice. Chips. Lollies, which I also ate.

Cheeses. And other get-better treats.

I will remake it today and pretend it was untouched.

He won’t know, hehe...

Though I hope he enjoys it as much as I did.

Either way, I hope I can make him smile.

He’s got that kind of smile that makes you want to believe in softness again.

He is the snotty green type of sick, so I’m going to nurse him to health of some sort.

To sit with him.

To be near him.

To offer comfort in the form of snacks and sarcasm and maybe a forehead kiss if the mood allows.... I have become fond of Dash.

I remember the get-well care packages my granny used to make for me when I was little.

Always wrapped in tea towels, eucalyptus rub, honey drops, and always with something sweet tucked inside.

She would hum a happy tune while she packed the hamper, like the act of giving was its own kind of gift, and I guess to her it was.

And perhaps she’s part of the reason I find myself awake just after midnight.

So, I wrote her a poem as she sits in my thoughts...

For My Grandmother

I found the news of your departure

In an email, clinical, hollow:

“Our grandmother will be dead within the hour.

Turning off the life support once we’ve finalised some things.

Will you be attending the funeral?”

No compassion lingered there.

But neither did rage in me,

Only indifference

I hadn’t realised I had earned.

It is not that I had no love for you.

I did.

A couple of memories flicker,

Soft and uneven.

But you, like the rest,

Saw little in my existence worth seeing.

And so I said goodbye

Long before your body gave me permission.

The soil will claim you,

And the cycle will continue,

Untouched by the weight of fractured blood.

Still, my eyes will haze

At a newborn star overhead.

I will smile,

Because I will pretend

It is you, finally shining where I can see.

I asked myself

If I had regret not saying goodbye.

I did not.

But I do wonder

If you regretted never saying hello,

While time held out its open palm

For decades.

My time is not owed

To those who turned their backs

While their pulse was strong.

So rest,

With the same effort you offered me.

We make choices.

We must honour them,

In life,

In death.

Our blood washed out

What feels like a lifetime ago.

Now we are strangers:

Flickers of shared breath,

Once upon a time.

Once I have done that, I look over and see my phone.

Still, time doesn’t seem to move quickly at all.

My eyes, my face, my skin, every fibre feels fatigued.

Now wondering why I’m STILL awake, I glance at the date.

8th August.

Today is the anniversary of my father’s passing.

A lot of sadness lives in this day and in my mind.

But it is quiet sadness.

The kind that doesn’t scream, it just sits beside you, waiting to be acknowledged.

Maybe there’s something important I need to do.

Maybe sleep has been taken until I do.

So I wrote.

I wrote about him.

About how he’s missing from the pictures on the walls.

From the family lunches.

From the special occasions on the calendar.

I wrote about how hard it was to imagine a day where I had open my eyes and no matter how high or low I looked, he wouldn’t be there.

I wrote about how time has made it easier to move forward, even when it feels like he’s been left behind.

I wrote about how unfair it feels to be so far apart.

How my heart holds a spot for him that’s wide and protected.

How I know he’s safest, closest to my heart.

From the bottom of my heart and everything in between, I miss him.

I think of him fondly and often.

And I love him.

It is now 5am and my brain has thought about everything it could possibly be distracted by.

Dash.

The way things are flowing between us, soft, steady, kind.

The care package I half ate and still plan to deliver like I did not.

The way he listens without trying to fix me.

Then there is the brutal CRPS flares that would see me easily win the gold if tossing and turning ever became an Olympic sport.

The sugar detox diet to help with inflammation I said I was doing....is having some detours. Since, I just ate sugar.

Safe to say that is not going well.

My body feels tight and tired and wired all at once.

Believe it or not,

I still wondered why I was up after midnight.

Now I have welcomed the dawn of a new day, and I realise,

My mind is so very busy. My heart is full.

It is holding grief and memory and pain and hope.

It is trying to make sense of anniversaries and absences.

And maybe it was more healing to process and unload the burdens of the night

Than to sleep through them.

Because sometimes, before the wake,

There is the remembering.

The reckoning.

The writing.

The quiet kind of healing that only happens

When the world is still,

And you are not.