2:32 am.

It's nights like this that I cannot sleep. I don't know how this night is different from any other night or how I am different from the way that I am on any other night. The only way I even know that this is one of those nights that I can't sleep is from the undeniable fact that I cannot sleep. No one can argue with evidence like that.

I blame my mind, my overactive, still awake mind. It thinks about things that have no relevance. It creates instances of other people and these instances, be it my mother, a random admirer of my work, or a future employer, all ask me questions. It's an interview where I pick the questions, and I pick them because I know the answers.

The answers are always thoughtful, amusing, provocative in all the right ways. I congratulate myself on my eloquence, then roll over and groan because of my eloquence and therefore consciousness.

Sometimes I think about you. What our kids will look like, how they'll play games with you and fall down and you'll make them stop crying and start laughing. I think about how they'll have your hair and my lips, your nose and my eyesight, your stubbornness and my stubbornness. I think about being in the North Carolina section of a local bookstore and seeing something I've written. I think about having enough money to buy Edy's ice cream all the time. I think about how cute we'll look when we're old, when we'll have been together so long we look alike. I think about winning a Nobel Prize, or at least one of my children doing it and letting me hold it for a while. I think about garlic mashed potatoes with lumps in them.

I think too much.

Eventually, I'll realize that I really need to sleep. Of course, I knew that all along, but sometimes it hits harder than others. And I start counting, because I'll never fall asleep thinking about you or books or mashed potatoes. Sometimes it's sheep, sometimes just numbers flash in my head because it seems more boring. Sometimes I get into the forties or fifties and forget where I was. Then I know it's working and I start back at 1. Sometimes I make it to a hundred, and I know it's not working and I start back at 1. Sometimes my mind wanders back to the other things somewhere past 25.

I try different positions side, side, back, stomach. Sometimes I take off my clothes one at a time. It seems to help, maybe because I feel constricted. First go the shorts, followed by the t-shirt and whatever in my own private strip-tease. It is the only strip-tease performed to make the audience fall asleep.

Between the counting and the positions and the stripping, I usually get to sleep. And then there are some nights, where I just end up unclothed and awake. I try not to think about the hours until I have to get up. That kind of counting never helps.

This is one of those nights.