Awake. Awake. Awake. Here I lie, awake.

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Woken by a fleeting dream. Remembered now, but by morning will have been swept to the edges of my conscious mind. A shadow of memory, fighting desperately to be recalled, insisting on its mysterious purpose and comprehensible only in the language of REM. But it fights a losing battle. It will fade, banished to the land of unremembered dreams.

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It will go, yet I remain. In the wee hours of the morning.

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There’s that crucial window when you can slip back to sleep upon waking in the middle of the night, like a signpost that suddenly appears and vanishes while driving down a dark country road. I missed that chance.

For some untold reason, the pistons of my mind started firing when I woke, summoning thoughts both significant and insignificant with equal, earnest intensity. I would like to remind my mind that this whole sleep thing was its idea in the first place—though it seems quite uninterested in it now.

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In the morning, when the phone on the bedstand rings in the new day with its eighty-decibel jingle, I know my mind’s interest in sleep will have been renewed. My bed will have transmuted into the most comfortable place in the known universe. But that doesn’t help me now.

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My wife sleeps, serene, next to me, close and yet worlds away. I am immediately envious.

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Time passes. I know it does, though I cannot be sure how much. Not without looking at the phone and punishing my eyes with its blazing light—a star, white hot and rectangular, burning in the black space of my bedroom. Why did I ever get rid of my old LED alarm clock?

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I’m trapped in limbo. Too awake to sleep. Too covetous of sleep to rise.

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I do rise, eventually. More out of boredom than anything else.

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My dog lifts his head as I trudge past the couch. It’s probably his favorite place to sleep. That’s usually where I find him in the morning, when he’ll roll onto his back for tummy rubs. I can tell by the look that he's giving me that I’ve disturbed him. I have little doubt he will have better luck falling back asleep than me.

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I open the fridge. Soft light illuminates the kitchen. I pour myself some water, trying not to bang the filter on the refrigerator shelves when I return it to its place. Something happens to water in the middle of the night that makes it particularly refreshing. I consider another drink, but now I am cold, and the bedwarmth calls to me even if sleep remains frustratingly aloof.

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Back in bed, I listen to the sounds of the house. Thermal contraction makes it creak and pop. A pipe under the floorboards sounds its tinny metronome. The furnace wakes from its slumber to maintain the house temperature before returning to hibernation. The mechanical music of an artificial ecosystem.

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Closing my eyes, I exhale deeply. There’s no forcing sleep—every kid the night before Christmas could tell you as much.

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So here I lie, awake. The wee hours have never felt so long.