When you cannot sleep

Walk the earth, in circles around your block, in paces between your fridge and dining table, across the slow curve of your continent.

Walk because walking means you’re not sitting or lying down or curling into a ball and wallowing in your sorrow.

Walk because each soft pad of a bare foot on concrete/tile/dirt is your body’s rebellion to a cold end, to a sorrow filled night. Breathe the free air, look at the sky and know the stars are far off, dead and beautiful.

Know that even if the city lights and the smoker’s cough of exhaust from a hundred thousand cars blinds your eye to their shining, the stars are casting light from their funeral pyres even now.

When you cannot sleep, revel in waking.