#teamnosleep

There is a faint chirping in the yard a chill in the air the crickets are serenading along with my tick-tacking fingers and the hair on my arms is standing up. No one else is standing up, though, not even me. Seated on a sandy-colored carpet I hear my sister silently snore everyone is down, but like my hair I'm up and my mind races, like kids in a scavenger hunt running and searching for specific items picking up some, but leaving others and feeling guilty later for leaving those others behind. It continues, still, this mad scramble for thought and though my body tires and my eyes dim my ears stay sharp as my mind hurries on and the crickets keep time to the tick-tacking of my hands. This can't be healthy, this staying up to write, but how can I sleep when it feels so right? The doctors write, "Nine hours each night." One guy said, "You can sleep when your dead." A girl made the comment, "It;s like death without commitment." Sleep. What I need, yet what I avoid. Yet whenever I awake after finally sleeping my first thought is always: "I need to get to bed earlier." Strange that I know it revitalizes me and that maybe after a couple nights I'll feel a lot better. But writing my real thoughts-- staying up with the chirping, the tick-tacking the snoring, and the creaking-- is restoring in itself! My body is done, but my mind's just begun. It draws up images, music, laughter, and words and sends them all to my hands to be conveyed in ways that only happen once, never twice. That is why I am awake. To write what I must.