Can’t Sleep

Can’t sleep… can’t sleep… oh why does this happen to me?

Tickticktick of a heart somewhere near or far. I only know it’s a heart ticking because of something I read…. Oh, Edgar, I would have loved you more… than her. You would not have had to write about your nightmare. You didn’t mean to, I know that, but your heart, the one you had to write about, is my obsession too. And my eyes won’t close because the sound clicks like clockwork and I cannot bear tiny, repetitive sounds. It’s not a condition, a disorder. It’s just that they drive me nuts.

Yellow wallpaper. There is a story by that title, and the woman in the story is dragged along, hidden, like the heart that ticks. A bomb or a bug to be squashed.

 It’s not a sound that comes from the creeping wallpaper, but it is still very loud and the woman in the room is obsessed. She cannot take her eyes off it and knows what hovers behind the fake sunny surface. She cannot say anything, in case the lords of the manor catch her talking to the wall and its paper, like reading a book aloud. She would have to pretend she’s reciting poetry she knows by heart, verses she will write some day if she survives. It is an insistent image.

But you should know I am not between that yellow paper with its flowery pattern and the wall. My walls are blue and lack wallpaper, fortunately. Nobody could slither over them beneath the painted surface, so I am safe from captivity.

And still, I can’t sleep. My thoughts take to the sky, which is heavily hung with leaden forms. For a while, minutes, hours, I am uncertain what surrounds me, but I am certain none of it is sleep. I need to keep moving. Maybe walking or flying will tire my thoughts out so I can get back to sleeping.

In my rush to find what has forsaken me), I have traveled many kilometers. It was not my intention to go so far from home. Now I am on the edge of this city where modern is just a word and many people never sleep, especially the ones who were once in the Quintana until they were awoken.

I have not ended up there, because I can hear the water of the of the stream called the Sarela raging past a few houses where once there were tanneries. The factories are gone, but the current remains, and it terrifies me to think of living with the incessant beating of foam on stiff rocks. 

“The noise is no longer needed,” I think, still perplexed at having wandered across the ocean to this particular spot. “But I see no one around who can stop it.”

And I must rein this thought in because I cannot sleep. Not if I cannot remove the obsessive sound of the water that no longer washes the animal hides. Even the scent is gone, although the thrashing of urgent waves is eternal. I know this will kill me if I don’t get away. I am so tired and would never be able to make it out alive if I fell into the river.

 I have come here without a bridge and am still crossing the ocean, probably will do it forever. If the Sarela weren’t important, I might be able to get away and find a place to rest my head, but it’s too late now for speculation.

Thinking has become its own little river. I am drowning in thoughts and all I really need is to rest. In my own bed, not walking where I might trip, which could be way worse than the wallpaper.

It is raining tonight, I see. Well, not see, hear. Some nights those drops console me, but other nights they hover and dare me to think, not sleep. They often win, like tonight when my brain refuses to stay put in its own bed.

The eaves are speaking. They expect me to understand.

My scalp is crawling. When that happens, it’s like the yellow wallpaper is covering my head and the woman from that story is inching her way across the nerves that are spiking, like tiny needles.

Obviously I can’t sleep when that happens. I grab the sides of my head and beg for mercy.

The whole world is creaking outside my window now. I no longer worry if it’s the one from afar, with the obsolete tanneries, or if it’s the one in my back yard. The noise is overwhelming and a wild, dangerous thought comes into my head.

Somewhere a cat claws at my toes. I jerk my feet away, because the spikes hurt, but they are not worse than the itching. Or the ideas that roam. But I’m certain my door was shut and no cat can be doing that now. No real cat.

I am alone here, with all of this inability to sleep, no animal to accompany me and not knowing if I should try listening to an audiobook or watching Hulu. Maybe a basketball game - if I had a season pass, but they’re too expensive. There aren’t many options when eyes are open, searching for a reason to close again.

I hear something. It’s very faint, but my hearing is excellent. I can’t hear a pin drop in the forest - is that the way the saying goes? I’m so exhausted- but there’s something making a noise. I don’t know where it’s coming from, but I’ll find it, eventually. I need to find it and get rid of it.

Faucets never drip in the daytime. It’s late, though, so possibly someone didn’t turn one off all the way. Or it needs to be fixed. I don’t have the name of a good plumber, so how can I get it fixed? Not at this hour, of course.

And that’s also why I could never live beside rushing water like the Sarela. I would constantly be trying to turn it off. Or trying to find someone to repair it.

But I can be happy if I live between moving waters, if there are two of them, like where I live: a river and an ocean, both very quiet. If I don’t see them rolling and churning, then I can breathe easily. You see I have vertigo and cannot swim, which is a reason to avoid the edge of the water. Rivers are more dangerous than oceans.

Since I’m fully and horribly awake, my thoughts are roaming again, and now I wish I could remember the downpour in Rúa Nova. The torrents slice through the old street and try to hack pieces of the stone streets loose. I wonder if, after ten more centuries of downpours, a dent will be visible where rain gushes to the ground from a roof near Pombal. Surely there’s some remnant of wet centuries on a gutter that offers an escape route to the excess precipitation.

Rain on grass is different. It thuds and stops. Rain on stone has a different purpose. It echoes and cleanses, makes little streams much smaller than the Sarela that find freedom in Quintana’s empty tombs. The ones people try not to mention.

I could watch this parade of rain all night, sleep would be forgotten if I were there, watching.

Sometimes I try to sleep, want to sleep. Not beneath the stone archways, though, and not when my head is full of Winkens, Blinkens, and Nods that should have passed away long ago because I haven’t read Mother Goose in decades. Not when someone somewhere is saying good night Moon and thinking that will remove this curse of open eyes. Not when all the streams, rivers, oceans, and hopes that are stored in this bottle that is my body.

A bottle with a single message: “If you can’t sleep, let me know. I’d love some company.”