3 am spaghetti

I have always had trouble sleeping. Some people struggle to string words together in daylight hours, but I am constantly talking my way to the alphabet’s Y

and never reaching the elusive

Zzzzzz.

I eat late at night, my stomach’s black hole replacing the darkness of REM cycles. All of the bolognese in the house can’t plug that spatial area that magically disappears carbs and anxiety and the self-love it takes to accept rest as a gift,

not a crash.

__

Is disorder a sauce-laden treat sucked into a black hole and burning my throat on the way

downdowndown

and wouldn’t it mean

defying gravity

to reject the pasta’s path

from kitchen to fork to gut?

As chaotic and uncertain as that force is, and as infinite as the Y seems,

I pull a soft nightgown over my head and slipper my feet and brush out my hair

every single night

because I see a glimmer of starlight in me

where I thought it had collapsed.

//

Nightgown: Victoria’s Secret

Slipper boots: MIA