Half Light
Sleep, and the day it leaves behind
You are not ill, and you are not quite well. The night shows up later.
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Not a treatment. A smaller job for tonight.
Not more hours. A rest that is actually there in the morning.
The bill at 15:10 gets smaller when the night was given its length.
Small things stop taking the long way. You are still you by evening.
You are not ill, and you are not quite well. A short night rarely stays in the night. It arrives later, when the light thins and the day wants more than you have. This page is that delay, seen clearly, and three small things for tonight. Not a treatment.
You would not call a doctor for this. You would not call it a good week either.
The hours were there. The rest was not.
It works, then it doesn't. Usually in the afternoon.
Patience is thinner than the calendar says it should be.
On paper you are well. In the room, the light is lower.
Ordinary hours. That is the point.
The alarm in the dark. In the north the sun is still a rumour. In the south the day has started without you.
The commute, the first screen, the sense of being a little behind a day that has only just begun.
The wall. The light thins, or lunch was a long time ago. This is where last night arrives.
Dinner. Late in Madrid, early in Helsinki. The evening has two jobs: to feed you, and to become a night.
Still lit. The phone is a small sun. Tomorrow is being written in blue.
Not a diagnosis. A way to tell them apart.
The body is in bed. The day is not.
The mind sits up. What follows is a thin rest.
You slept the hours and woke unfinished. This is the night people miss, and the one that makes a grey week.
Not a new life. The plain sort of thing a doctor says before anything stronger.
Most nights, in bed at the same time. The body trusts a door that returns more than a perfect one.
On your eyes, not on a screen. Ten minutes outside. In a northern winter, this is the whole trick.
Another room is enough. The night can then be dark enough to begin.
If you want a number, take seven. Not a promise. A length you can see the end of.
Keep the hour.
The phone sleeps somewhere else.
You notice the afternoon before it notices you.
The morning is not new. It is only less in debt.
In December the day is only visiting. Tiredness hides in the dark and gets called the season.
Dinner at ten, bed at one, the alarm at seven. The night was never given a full shift.
The meeting is at nine. The mind is still in yesterday.
The table was long and good. Sleep was what got pushed aside.
This is not medicine, and it will not cure a broken sleep. If the nights have been bad for weeks, if they frighten you, or if the days feel unsafe, speak to a doctor.
Elsewhere, this grey stretch has a clinical name: sub-health. It is not a disease. It is a tired kind of fine.