Between Bruises & Blooms

4:17 a.m.
is not a time.

It is a room
I keep waking up inside.

The whole house
has gone soft around me—

children breathing,
cats tucked into corners,
the refrigerator humming
like it knows
I am still here.

Everyone else
belongs to sleep.

I belong
to the blue light
of another almost-morning.

To thoughts
that waited all day
to grow teeth.

To memories
that only knock
when the world
is too quiet
to drown them out.

At 4:17
I have reorganized
my entire life
without moving
from the bed.

I have replayed
conversations
from ten years ago.

Buried people
who are still alive.

Resurrected people
who are not.

Invented disasters.

Solved problems
that do not exist yet.

Written half a poem
inside my skull
and lost it
before sunrise.

My body begs
for sleep.

My brain
keeps striking matches.

One thought.

Another.

Another.

Until the dark
is full of tiny fires
and I am lying
in the middle of them
pretending
I am resting.

Morning eventually
finds me.

It always does.

Through the blinds.
Under the door.
Across the floorboards
like evidence.

And somewhere
around 6 a.m.

I stop saying
I cannot sleep

and start saying

I guess
I'm awake.