When the call to prayer sounds
and the sun’s about to rise,
my thoughts restlessly dissect
this sorrow, that guilt, old lies.
“I can’t keep up”, I say,
“slow down and stop the mumbling!”
But they answer with obtuse eloquence,
lingering, rolling, and tumbling.
How lucky I find those people,
who are right now asleep.
Their heartbeats slow and steady,
their dreaming calm and steep.
I look at the clock on the wall,
time matters when I’m awake;
it ticks away my collagen,
it puts my still youth at stake.
I unhook the clock from its nail,
I take out its long life battery.
I now can comfortably glower
at the pink of the sun with flattery.
I hear the beep of a truck
as it backs up to offload
some toxic water in the valley,
where birds once kept their abode.
I look away pretending
it’s not murder that I just saw,
so instead I look at the stray dog,
who’s licking the wound on his paw.
I gathered it’s from the beer bottle
smashed beside that rugged rock,
green shards strewn about everywhere
on the path I often walk.
I decide to look around
for a more pleasant sight to see,
for an insomniac must not crumble
when the world goes down to its knee.
I see our watchman limping,
he drags his bad leg on the sand.
His slippers are filled with pebbles,
he’s holding a bowl in one hand.
He stops and leans on the wood plank
dug deep into the coarse ground.
He calls for the stray dog to come,
clicking his tongue with a sound.
The stray dog limps to Subash,
the watchman I’ve known for years,
he frantically drinks the water in the bowl
and wags his tail for a ‘Cheers’.
I smile down from the third floor
at the two limping souls below,
who find one another each morning
from that time since not long ago.
The pink of the sun is now orange,
the call to prayer has long ended,
and my tired drowsy mind
is almost entirely mended.
But I still hear its burden,
I still can feel it drag,
So I decide to further look
for some more time to lag.
The clock’s still off the wall,
inept with its frozen seconds.
I turn away and ignore it
each time it urgently beckons.
I search outside and notice,
the streetlights are switching off.
There’s nothing more to distract me,
but a neighbor’s ‘smoker’s cough’.
I wonder if he slept well,
or like me, he stayed up all night.
I wonder if he worries about his lungs
or gave up on fighting the fight.
Now that the day is starting,
I keep my thoughts at bay.
They’re flighty, how they come and go
and when they choose to obey.
I have to get it together,
get up and be more practical.
I have to change and do some work,
be stronger and more tactical.
So I set the clock and hang it
on its rightful spot on the wall.
it makes its ticking and tocking,
not budging to stand still or stall.
Somehow my mind already knows
that it’s useless to argue things,
like time, or dreams, and what they mean,
and the wakefulness all this brings.
But someone keeps me roused,
and I know that girl, it’s me.
I hold her hand when I can’t sleep
and we go on a thinking spree.
We shuffle among emotions,
we buff them ‘till their rough and raw.
With the rise of the sun we part our ways
and repress what we thought and saw.
I later go down to the parking
as Subash is getting ready to leave.
I tell him about my sleepless night
and the kindness that I saw him achieve.
“Why are you awake?” he asks me,
“It’s just 6 a.m. of the day!”
He shook his watchless wrist and says,
“Your brain has too much to say!”
“I wish they paid me just like you
to stay awake at night”,
I told Subash as I was thinking to go,
and he laughed with such delight.
“The only cure for sleeplessness,” he tells me,
“is just not to think too much.
You see they’re not that important,
all those opinions and such.
“So why stay up and brood,
when some of us just want their bed?
At night you just don’t think!
Your brain cells are sleeping or dead!”
He swirls his finger by his temple,
as if it to say I am crazy.
“Now look at you…” he mumbles to me,
“You look so tired and lazy.”
I smile at Subash’s head
as I watch him limp away.
I get what he was saying,
and the more he meant to say.
Next time I stay awake,
unable to sleep or just rest.
I will put the talking girl in my psyche
to a confrontational test.
Right there she’ll put down her ego,
and she’ll learn to respect time.
I’ll teach her that self-forgiveness
is not always a self-seeking crime.
When our thoughts chase each other
like two birds in a tree,
I’ll tell her to stop and remember
how mindless thoughts can be.
“Your worries do not mean anything,
and what has passed is past.
Everything that happens is bound to be done,
so please just sleep at last!”
I say this out loud to myself,
as I stand out there in the parking.
I put my car key in my pocket
when I hear the stray dog barking.
I ask Subash for a plastic bag
and make a run to the rocky swale.
I pick up the broken glass from the ground
while the stray dog is wagging his tail.
He limps away to the valley
and sniffs around a tall plant.
I never noticed these mangroves before,
budding when one thought they can’t.
“There is a chance of survival,
no matter the toxic waste.
We can clean up the broken glass!”
I said to myself in haste.
May this chattering insomniac
tonight look forward to sleep,
and not put her thoughts on a pedestal
near promises she can’t keep.
May she hold that thinking girl in her head
and tell her how much peace is rare,
and how there is nothing so ponderous in the world
that a strong sleeping soul can’t bear.
When I thought my thoughts were necessary,
I stayed up awake all night.
I’m sorry those hours that one spends dreaming
were too stunned by my own light.
By Beisan AlShafei
Beisan's Burble 