I’m lying in bed staring at the ceiling, waiting for sleep to do its job, and it’s not happening.
The room is quiet in that heavy, after-midnight way, like the house itself has decided to hold its breath. Not the peaceful kind of quiet. The kind that presses in around your ears until you notice every small sound that shouldn’t matter but suddenly does. My lamp is off. Curtains half-drawn. Moonlight slips through the gap and paints a pale stripe across the floor, catching on the edge of my dresser and the pile of clothes I never bothered to fold. I’d showered earlier, scrubbed myself raw like I could rinse the night out of my skin, brushed my teeth on autopilot, tied my hair up, changed into an old oversized shirt, and crawled into bed hoping exhaustion would knock me out cold.
It didn’t.
