As quietly as possible with steering on full lock, back and forth, reverse park in to a bay parallel to the curb stone outside home. In, just, adjust forward a tad full lock steering counter clockwise back in and done. Engine off. Could sleep in the seat for a few hours undisturbed
Unload file cases, two bags, coat, mp3 player, flask, phone, Celtic scarf. Trip on curb stone and drop phone. Of course the screen side faced down landing. Of course it’s cracked but too fried and fuzzy to do anything other than pocket it, fucked screen and all, a line of blurred lampposts above lighting the topography like uap halos converging as insects might in a curving updraft of swirling fog
Lock car, double bleep echoes, every other soul deep deep in slumber like characters in Under Milk Wood, except you’re as liminal as an electric milk float passing complete with a faint pair of trousered legs dangle-hanging off the back. Around the hedgerows, unlock gate and in through the back yard, k9 waiting like a trooper in the kitchen window. Love you wee creature. Flub the keys pulling them out of the lock once in, dropping them onto a resonant tiled floor too. Fuck, they all heard that. Stoop down to pick them up, i tip coffee remnants over my coat from forgetfulness fatigue. Twat, throw it on top of a mountain of laundry
Up and up through each floor, shoes off, silently hazed and walled off from both sleep and company by a vertical stairwell that I’d use a stairlift format at this point to ascend if one were available, stripping down per floor finally into our fresh warm duvet and Mrs Murphy’s embrace of timeless gentleness for a cuddle spooning. Celibacy in the age of pregnancy = do not even get a chubby this morning mate. Fail. Don’t wake her up with your poking genitalia so I roll onto my back. Drifting. Nipper no5, jfc what have we done. What if it’s a girl? Who cares, be grateful and be fade to black ..
Our clock glimmers peaking behind an obstructing ridgeway pillow. Thank you pillow! Don’t look. “You have to look, cunt”. Nah, luxuriate in a partners soft curls, instant arousal again, floating and dissolving into dazed dreamland of redacted sentence
or is it upside down and it's nine minutes past midnight grim hope
Light sources shift past the tree lines outside, signalling it could be 06:00, 08:00 or 09:00 - all possible - problem is exactitudes if you can’t recall the day of the week through fatigue, each day starting or ending with a blurry intro enfolding itself into the next by the hawks of morning. Or is it evening? Don’t think, sleep
Do I
have to see? Yes. YOU MUST LOOK CUNNNN …… . Too late. Back out again very briefly for maybe an entire 60 seconds with the ghost of a dream resurfacing, re-immersing, re-enveloping, teasing. Yet again, emergence drifts and a vaguely familiar dissociative voice half whispers, half-pleads “just 2 more minutes please, oh Great Creator, oh First Source, just 2 more fuckin minutes of peace and warm female serenity .. “
Slipping momentarily back into .. what .. what was the dream doing? Light murmur as central heating fires up confirming, yes, it is indeed 5am. Instead of the opposite of insomnia, fatigue pushes the mind down to the cusp of not quite r.e.m sleep where you may rest but you’re never quite replenishing either. Heavy duty dark curtains help. No whiteness or light shades means near zero sunlight intrusion unless invited like a vampire even for a south-facing room. And then the bedroom door bursts open to the sound of cricket commentary and breakfast suggestion manifests and the immediate smell of burnt toast which could mean the oven grill is on with the grill door shut, enough to partially melt the entire fitting
Répéter for at least another decade so when early retirement beckons insomnia is bound to strike fully after essentially frying any remaining circadian rhythm circuitry permanently
