Not really in the Mood for Sleep

When summer nights got hot, I used to go up to the roof. I was in high school back then. If there were no clouds in the sky and the stars were bright, I would read. If not, I would just sit and listen to my street.

It was suburbia and there was virtually no traffic. Sometimes a car would cruise by, somebody returning home late. Sometimes cats would chase around or have a little fight in someone’s yard. Sometimes I would hear somebody yell in the their sleep, never figured out who that was. But sometimes, around two, maybe three AM, the light would come on in Molly Bartlett’s room. She lived across the street from me, one house down.

I knew her and we said “hi” during the day, but we never actually spoke, so I never asked her what she did up so late. I only wondered about it some nights when I sat on the roof, looking at the warm light. Most times, I did not wonder, I just looked and let my thoughts flow past me and into the nothing.

Her light would switch off after a half-hour, sometimes forty-five minutes. Then I would just sit there alone and doze off in the morning light.

Posted by: Paweł Kowaluk