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I had an insomniac friend who'd email me at two, three, four a.m. I'm an insomniac, as well, so I'd email back. "Hey," I once wrote. "We're ironic vampires made weaker by the moon." My friend wrote, "I listen to my husband and kids sleeping. I stand guard at their doors. My insomnia only makes sense when I'm pretending to be a night watchman." We usually wrote to each other after two or more sleepless nights. We wrote when we were at our worst. But that correspondence ended a few years ago. I'm still not a good sleeper but I've become a better sleeper. I don't know how my friend's insomnia is going. We no longer speak. But I thought of her this morning when the birds woke me with their warbles and trills. I'd slept for six hours divided by an hour of quiet panic— a decent night for me. Then, as I drank my first cup of coffee, I wondered if my former friend was listening to the birds greeting the dawn in her city. I wondered if she'd slept well and was happy to hear their music. Or if she'd paced her house all night long and was convinced that those goddamn morning birds were singing a death song. I thought to send her this poem but I won't. There's no need to finish this story because some friendships turn out to be migratory.
Your poems always surprise me, and grip me.
Just your mere mention of the night watchman sent me to Tom Petty’s song and Louise Erdrich’s book about her grandfather! Alas, I don’t often suffer from insomnia but I do get lost in rabbit holes sometimes. Thank you for your lead here in your fine poem, Sherman!