At 2:14, again

It is 2:14 again. It is always 2:14 when I wake up. I have stopped looking, because looking confirms it, and confirmation makes me feel like a person being watched by a small clerical god with a clipboard.

I lay in the dark and listened to the building. The pipes. The neighbor above me, who walks at this hour for reasons I have never asked. The fridge cycling on. There is a whole second life happening in this building at 2:14 and I am one small awake member of it.

I did not write to you. I almost did. I wrote a draft on the inside of my eyelids, which is the safest place, and then I let it go, and then I slept.