If I fall asleep now I’ll have four hours before morning.  That’s not bad.  I can live on four hours of sleep. 

            I roll onto my left side.  The white walls are so bright that they eerily glow in the blackness of my bedroom.  Being pressed up against the cold wall feels good on my skin.  My window’s open, yet I’m still sweating.  The air is stuffy and feels like it’s closing in on me.  The hot heat dries the inside of my nostrils.  I just hope I don’t get a nosebleed like I used to as a child.  I would have to sleep with a humidifier in my room just because my nose would dry and then bleed through the night.  The first time it happened I was scared, but like everything else I got used to it.  That was years ago in a far off place.  This is now.  The sweat makes my sheets moist, and reminds me what it feels like to have pissed the bed.  Strands of wet hair stick to my forehead.  Get to sleep.  Get to sleep.

            I roll onto my right side.  The crimson lips of my alarm clock whisper three a.m.  I close my eyes to ignore the flirtation.  I used to be able to sleep, once upon a time.  That was before real life happened.  That was before I got stuck in a room of waking dreams, debt, family, friends, my past, the future, life.  One by one each worry tries to coax me awake.  Each thought of something that I can’t seem to get out of my head creeps back.  The sandman is a sick man.  Does he not know what happens when he misses a person? 

            I roll onto my back.  The roof is daunting, I can’t see it, but I know it’s there hanging above me.  When I look up out my peripherals I see the white walls around me slowly closing in.  If I don’t keep my eye on them I feel they’ll completely enclose me.  My mind goes blank, nothing but blackness.  I’m not thinking.  I’m breathing.  In.  Out.  In.  Out.  In.  Out.  I’m not thinking.  My mind is empty.  I’m not thinking.

            I roll onto my left side.  The presence of the cool wall is comforting.  It’s there to watch over me.  It’s there to keep me safe.  The thin sheet I have over my body is soaked.  Maybe I did piss the bed.  Maybe this is a dream, a really bad dream, a dream that I have every night.  Maybe I’m not really awake, I’m just dreaming I am. 

            I roll onto my right side.

            If I fall asleep now I’ll have three hours and fifty-five minutes before morning.