Why I can’t sleep at 3 a.m.

I write these posts at 3 a.m., when the silence is so overbearing that I hear the words in my head forge constellations and burst. When all I really want is a glass of vodka to help numb the throb of a broken heart but I have to remind myself that when I wake up all I will be left with is a pounding headache and healing cuts. I drink anyway. When the only light left on is the blaring white of the computer screen because all the flickering flames of passion have long gone from my blood. When the hollow in my body is too big to be stitched back once again but too small for you too see, apparently. When my body prickles as the ghosts of depression, anxiety and panic brush their fingers on my skin, inviting me to join them and promising me a fantasy too good to be true.

Wine is bottled poetry

But it is on nights like these that I remember eating strawberry ice cream and roast chicken for breakfast with my brother and the afternoons in bed curled up with my dog and the old man who smiles at me every time I pass by his bakery on my early morning runs and the late nights in my best friend’s apartment surrounded by fairy lights and cheap wine. It’s on nights like these that the memories cloud my head and I pull myself back to reality because there are people out there who love me and believe in me and would do anything to make me smile and I promised I’d never let them down.