The poetics of insomnia

Now I lay me down to sleep (adult version)

When I was young, I started talking to myself in the shower.

My mom would knock and ask, “Who do you have in there with you today, Emma?” And the answer was usually plural—some random assortment of aspirations and worries and curiosities.

Occasionally, the crowd would keep me up at night. Come 9 or 10 pm, my synapses would turn into defiant little toddlers and start firing just because they knew they shouldn’t.

They’d start checking to see I could still recite all fifty states in order. Or require I edit a music video to Simple Plan’s “Just a Kid.” Or imagine which family members could be responsible for carrying which pets in case of a fire. (Mom: cat, Dad: cat, brother: turtle, me: bearded dragon.)

Laura Villareal has a poem about such synapses that starts,

My Worries Have Worries

so I built little matchstick houses
with large ceilings, a garden for them to grow

tomatoes, cilantro, & carrots
their worry babies will eat

but they chew on the henbit of me anyway

(You can listen to Pádraig Ó Tuama read it on the Poetry Unbound podcast.)

The mind is funny like that.

It doesn’t take so well to mothering—to being told that worries or aspirations or (worst of all) curiosities have a curfew.

So I learned to just let it be when it gets fired up at night. Gentle parenting, if you will.

In hopes of catching someone in the midst of such a moment, I’ve written a poem for you. And scheduled it to send at exactly 3 am. (For EST, at least. It’s the principle, ok?)

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Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray myself in bed to keep.
And if I rise before the dawn
to quick-check if the oven’s on,

I pray to bed I will return
and line up sheep to count in turn.
But if a sheep should wander out,
I will not ask what that’s about

or count the ways I might have made
a more compelling case to stay.
May angels hear me long lament
how all my conversations went

and wonder if that one might ring
like some odd innuendo thing?
Until I turn on ocean sounds
and let the drifting slow me down,

so soon my thoughts begin to drop
like little rocks from cliffy tops.
And when important questions plonk
like “can my car run out of honk?”

at last, I’ll call this one a night
and drift off in the morning light.

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Sweet dreams!

🐱
Emma