Tick-Tock

Tick-Tock goes the clock and I am still awake.
12:40, 12:41, 12:42...
The time goes so slowly when the rest of the world is sleeping and you simply can't join them. I'm not sure what it is that is playing on my mind but I find myself restless and unable to find peace in both my body and my thoughts.
My bed feels hard and my ,normally soft, sheets are scratchy on my naked skin.
The temperature in the room is perfectly imperfect.
Not hot enough to allow the freedom of no covers, not cold enough to allow me to bury in a blankets comforting embrace.
My mind races from image to image as stillness averts me dodging behind a repeating line in a song or one passage from a book just finished.
Tick-Tock goes the clock and I am still awake.
12:46, 12:47, 12:48...
I reach out to find comfort in the body lying next to me. The body containing the soul that can always bring me peace.
But tonight the coolness of his shoulder makes me uneasy, the labor of his breath seems too loud and the hair upon his legs makes my body itch and squirm.
He reaches out from slumber to rest his foot on mine in a loving dreamy haze but the grumpy insomniac within me wants to kick him like a five year old and tell him to get on his own side.
"Mum he's touching me" flies through my mind and I can almost hear the words...
"If I have to pull this car over".
How funny it is that in our most frustrated and weary moments we can so easily resort to our inner child like emotions.
At 6 I was going on 12, at 12 I was going on 20 and now at 30 I am going on 6.
Tick-Tock goes the clock and I am still awake.
12:54, 12:55, 12:56...
My key strokes come slowly and my eyes feel dry and sticky against my lids. Everything is fatigued and yet the frustration of not sleeping keeps me from my bed like a never ending circle.
Count sheep they say.
one, two, three.
I become board rather than tired so the sheep start dancing and then singing and now I have their song stuck in my head. AARRRGGGGHHHHH
Tick-Tock goes the clock and I am still awake.
12:59, 01:00, 01:01...
Another day has passed and I am still counting the minutes. Why is it sleep evades me?
Am I to witness something incredible in these early morning hours?
I walk to the window and look out to view the spectacle that I am being kept awake for....
But the street is quiet and not even a cat is passing under the lamp light.
I listen to the nights silence and realize that perhaps my insomnia is a gift after all.
For the quiet of the night is delicious and the breeze in the trees in our yard sings out a haunting lullaby that only sounds this sweet when the rest of the world has become still.
Tick-Tock goes the clock and I am still awake.
01:06, 01:07 01:08...
Stillness overtakes me, my eyes soften, my mind releases and I am off to bed.
Tick-Tock goes the clock.
Tick-Tock. Tick-Tock