Insomnia

 by Kimberly Grey

 

 

issue 68

april 5th, 2010

images by josh amidon

 

12:01 a.m.

Midnight. I know without looking at the clock. I glance quickly, think I see your body somewhere between the door and bed. But it's not there. You are 1539 miles away. I walk the space anyway, five paces exactly. I become fixated on the movements of my feet. How they step around the items on the floor, how they know exactly where the empty spaces are and how to fill them. I begin to see the carpet turn darker where my skin touches it (dirt from walking barefoot in the new spring.) The dark parts resemble a country. Not one that already exists, like India or France, but one that created itself right there in front of me. It must know I need a place to live beyond midnight. I sit down in it; know I have nothing else to govern.

1:43 a.m.

Geography never interested me. But now that it keeps us apart, I wonder what plateaus and rivers lay between us, what states I'd have to drive through to make it there. I lie down in bed, breathe Texas into the pillow. Why can Texas have you and I cannot? Lone Star. Alamo. Big Tex. Just names. I go back to my country, open a poetry anthology to page 1539. Neruda. "Because the earth shook – it did –, that awful night; then dawn filled all the goblets with its wine; the heavenly sun declared itself; while inside, a ferocious love wound around and around me." God I'm tired (though I'm not really addressing God). It's hard to believe in anything with you gone.

 

4:36 a.m.

The radiator won't stop humming. I think it wants attention. But I’m too tired to fuss with its buttons and wants. Instead I’m thinking of music, of you fingering the piano keys. I move my hands to the wood surface of the desk, press my fingers into it. The dark, knotted spots are the black keys. I play a sad, minor scale. Nothing. But I'm not expecting any real music. I know the silence of my hands. I’ve been here before without you.

6:01 a.m.

I’m back to pacing now. My country has lightened and I can barely see its borders. It wasn’t a good country anyway. I still feel lonely. There are still five paces from the bed to the door but I walk them more slowly now, stepping on all the items on the carpet. I’m more aware of what is not surrounding me than what is. This night is all I have and now it, too, is vanishing. A shard of light is cutting the floor. So I think of you, think of Canada, when our bodies were embalmed with sweet liquor. We ate purple grapes all night, biting into the skin and rolling the insides in our mouths. I think of how the inside of a grape must look without its skin. How without it, it’s only a wound. God, I’m tired (this time hoping he’s real) I think I’ll go to sleep. 

 

 

 

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