307.42: Primary Insomnia
/A complaint of difficulty initiating or maintaining sleep or non-restorative sleep that lasts for at least 1 month (Criterion A) and causes clinically significant distress or impairment in important areas of functioning.
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
It was so stupidly late
Yet she let herself stay up,
Surfing the channels
Like a refuge
Searching for a long-lost family.
She held her life together
With a stack of little post-it notes
She kept inside her bag
That was under a chair
Somewhere in the last bar.
Bars are filled with mirrors
Because there is never quite enough of us,
Because there is never enough noise,
And night after night, crowd after crowd
Our ancestors are always trying to sneak back
Into the shiny bright present.
The bartender restlessly cleans a glass,
Out of sorts that his life is
So emptied, so filled, so emptied.
Soon, when his shift is over
He will step into the night air,
Shrug his hands into his pockets
And no longer be a personality.
Finally, it was a relief
To meet ugly men
Because they would not ask her
To be someone else.
They too could be simple and grateful.
She wondered in those days,
As the City shook so vigorously
And was bathed in many glorious lights,
If anyone could ever speak to anyone again.
Shall we still scorn the anguish of the sparrows?
She cupped her heart in her hands
And offered it at each window
While the full but skeletal moon
Smiled and sailed on.
Oh City of the endless blinking tail lights,
Whose traffic gives and whose traffic takes away,
Can I trust myself into stillness
While you hum so tight around me?
When the all-night office cleaners
Haul out the trash from under
The desks of our endeavors,
I hear your wailing,
The ceaseless calling of unsolved needs,
Your savage intendedness.
And somewhere far ahead,
Out among the fading stars
Is the outline of the saintly figure
Who will one day cover you
With the long true branches
Of her sad, forgiving tears.
She closes the shades,
Forbids the rich dawn,
And sleeps.