insomnia

Last night I couldn’t sleep because of the stifled concerns susurrating across my bedroom, like buzzing flies or the sound of hard sleet on thin windowpane. I had some wonderful, tortured insomnia. After laying in bed for hours, uncomfortable to the point where sleep was no longer worth attaining, I thought about getting up for work, housecleaning, fucking. . .options for how to divert myself were considered and rejected (one was desirable but impossible, the other two did not seem distracting enough). i decided to go outside. I put on some pants and a fleece.

I walked downstairs and out the door. I wondered if my roommate would hear me leave. The air was cool. It was 3:03 A.M. I unlocked my bicycle and rode it around town. My eyes hurt.

The first bus to the Denver airport leaves at 3:20, and spring break
starts tomorrow, so many of the bus stops were filled with undergraduates
and their baggage. The only other people I saw were the late night drunks
and the too-young looking hook-ups swerving their way home. They all had better things to do than I did. They were going places with family and friends. They were going to have sex or cuddle or sleep it off. Wonderful. I stared at them. I was jealous. I thought about riding up the hill and waiting the three hours until dawn. Wouldn’t that be romantic? It seemed like too much work. I thought about bicycling by Albertine's house, just to feel close to her. I imagined the awkward conversation that would ensue if by I ran into her through some bizarre happenstance, what I could tell her to explain away my presence in her remote neighborhood at four in the morning.
At four in the morning, everything seems ill-advised. I stood straddling the top bar of my bike. I was crippled by indecision. There were no desirable alternatives. The empty town was lonelier than my bedroom. I went home. I made a quesadilla. I went to sleep. Going home felt incomplete. Going to sleep was nice, for a while. The quesadilla could have been better.