I woke after one a.m. from a dream that a friend had absorbed someone’s dead body into himself. He was lying in bed, and he looked understandably swollen. I felt his calf, and there were two legs inside his leg, not just one. Two legs in the other leg, too, and so on. I told him I was going to call the doctor, and he said, “You don’t need to,” got up out of bed in a sprightly manner, and strode away.
I lay there for a while thinking about that. I was lying on my back, because if, when I’m first going to sleep, I turn on either side, my right leg starts to hurt. If I lie on my back, it doesn’t. But lying on my back is how I take a nap in the afternoon, not how I go to sleep. I have always gone to sleep by turning on my side, as if rolling into a swimming pool from the edge.
I sleep on the right side of my twin bed, because the other side belongs to the cat, whether he sleeps with me or not. He was sleeping with me now, but then I heard him thud onto the floor and go away. Soon, an unearthly wailing came from below, and he walked upstairs, dropped his furry shark toy on the bed, and lay down again. I put the toy under my pillow because otherwise he would play with it while I was trying to sleep.
It was two o’clock. There are many things I can do in order to settle myself back down for sleep. Unfortunately, when I’m half awake, I don’t remember what any of them are. Instead, I lay there trying to write a poem about everything going through my head, and also trying to remember what the plaque on the wall next to my bed says, without turning on the light. It is possible I wasn’t entirely awake.
It was three o’clock. I turned the light on and read some poems in which the writer was trying to put herself in the mind of a tree or a rock. She said some intense things about birds, including a thrush and some swans. She reminded me of my sister somehow. I went to the bathroom and then came back and put the light out. One of the things you are supposed to do to go back to sleep is take deep breaths. I tried that. It didn’t work. I was hot and uncomfortable. The cat was comfortable, though, and I don’t like to disturb him.
It was four o’clock. Four o’clock counts as morning, so I turned the light back on, got dressed, organized my medicine cabinet, and went downstairs to have some peppermint tea and pay the bills.
The plaque on my bedroom wall is from a mortuary in Florida. I bought it at a flea market. It amuses and comforts me when I am getting ready to go to sleep. It says:
LAY BODY ON BACK
FEET FIRST INTO COOLER
BLOCK IS TO BE PLACED
UNDER HEAD
I will take a nice nap later on, fully dressed and lying on top of my comforter. I never have any problems sleeping when I do that.