Late night/early morning

Umm Junayd - because you asked so nicely (**Jazakh'Allah khair**)

This is basically the story of my life...

---Late night/early morning---

Tiredness is not in the head.

But rather in the feet that shuffle,

stumble over imagined cracks;

make body sway,

nautical shifts on solid ground.

In the eyes, 

robbed of day vision,

hollow and scratched by fatigue.

Seeing things others cannot

(their lack of existence a factor):

monkeys playing with watch hands,

friends past in cafe corners.

It is in the words

that come out (all wrong),

tangled and slurred,

bright-eyed but oblivious,

devoid of intended meaning.

It is in the truths

I'd rather not tell;

tumble from me,

full flood of revelation,

inhibition quelled by that lack of slumber.

Tiredness is, it seems, not my friend.

And yet, sleep is neither.

Battle, child-weary, 

night's rest that seeks to embrace me.

Surrender, finally - too late

to avoid the backlash of earlier avoidance.