Nighttime

It’s the middle of the night. I look through my idle Facebook conversations, trying to decide if it’s worth sending a message this late. I still haven’t fully embraced that feature, ever since it switched from an internal e-mail system to a real-time chat engine; unless I’m comfortable enough to drop random Simpsons references into conversation or just randomly send YouTube links, I tend to fret over my choice of words and hang nervously waiting for the response. It’s worse when it’s someone with whom I have an easier real-world rapport than normal.

I usually don’t bother, though. I assume you’re asleep anyway.

I can’t remember where I put my earphones. It’s too late for me to listen to anything on my phone as background noise, and I don’t want my mind to start dissecting each song, but I want to know where they are. I look all over the apartment. They’re not on any of my bookshelves. They’re not by the laptop I’m still getting used to, nor by the aging desktop I still use despite my frustration with its no longer sufficient capacities. I wonder if this is another sign I’m losing my memory. I check my jeans pocket, then the other one. Bingo.

There are too many things that need to be done tomorrow, but I’m up way too late to bother setting the alarm.

I had a dream the other night where you were in my city, and for some reason you just released an album. You’re not a musician, at least not in a professional capacity, but I thought nothing of it in that reality; maybe I was just distracted by the way more mundane frustrations manifested themselves there. Lack of money. Shortage of time. Incomplete collections. Constant vigilance over whether I’m pulling my weight. Either way, it felt good to look into your eyes again.