Chasing Sheep

It is past midnight again, where a heightened sense of wakefulness gets repetitive and unwittingly long. At this very hour, I am sure of but one thing, that restlessness will be stretched out all throughout the olden night. It invariably happens to me whenever I oblige myself to finish reading a chapter or two of a good book -- a great escape from the day-to-day 8-hour cycle of labor -- until I lose the elusive sleep. Now I regret shrugging it off, for I have to impatiently await its revisit in the wee hours of dawn. 

The electric brain waves have not ebbed just yet, and the least I want is to have to open my eyes at such an ironic, unforgiving, inopportune time. 

The wind blows a slow chill at 16 degrees toward my conspicuous naked feet, which manage to crawl out of my thin blanket. The white lights from outside knife through the curtains, not helping in concealing everything, lifeless and breathing, in this room. Blackholes, after all, do not exist on earth. Even in a woman's jet-black locks, one may find a stray brown strand of hair, an outlier that triggers an itch. Pardon me of the utter nonsense. Why can't it all be painted black at night? 

I look up the headboard, following a wealth of visible spectrum past through the window. There goes the culprit. I wince at it. Is this the threshold of sleep deprivation? Or a wry humor? 

I can feel the quiet fanning of the AC, fixed up high at the side of the dull whitewashed wall devoid of anything artsy, hung or posted. Its soft mumbling turns into a lapping of the soles of my feet, rousing a gentle tickle not enough for them to retract, nor for me to curl up. I can endure it for hours, like a log, so long as hypothermia remains at bay. I love it, and it might lull me to dreamland, just maybe. 

But still, it does not help, and I cannot invoke sleep. Now it has become a luxury. Remorse is everywhere, when I should have seized it while it was on a high courting me to rest. The more I resist it, the more its spirit dwindles. I realize it is a sulking fellow, too, which will leave you alone furtively. Now I am running after its tail, and it is, perhaps, around the bush, stubbornly hiding. 

I finally reach for my phone at my bedside, switch it on, in hopes that writing about the luckless circumstance at this very hour will tire and let me fall asleep.

Image: Woodlands Waterfront Park, Singapore