My head hit the pillow, and I thought that like other nights after exhausting days, I would soon be asleep. My eyes were closed, my breathing slowed, but minute after minute, hour after hour, I did not sleep. I tossed. I turned. I tried many different positions. The hours crept by. I did not sleep.
I had gone through many changes of late. The swell in my belly had deflated from lack of trespass, and I could lie on it as sleep became my solace. My life had gone from momentary possibility and a constant of company to a quiet aloneness in the span of a few days. That type of loss, one I chose not to think about, was a pattern in my life. It had become second nature to burn away the memory of things no more into an ashen pile and allow them to be swept away. Sleep helped me do that. It should
