Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

Sleepless in Nashville

Last night
I couldn’t sleep.
It was the third night this week.
Tossing and turning.
My back aching.
My head talking.
My legs on a cross-country road trip
with no road beneath them.
I thought tonight I would have no problem falling asleep.
After all,
I took a very intense yoga class in a room that was almost eighty-five degrees
and bordered on masochistic.
Surely that would guarantee me passage into dreamland.
Surely pure physical exhaustion from two nights of no sleep
would leave me no alternative but slumber.
But no.
I stayed awake,
wide awake.
I spent hours looking at the clock,
counting how many hours had passed and how few I had left if I were actually going to
consider this night a success.
By four a.m.,
after three ibuprofen and a piece of valium,
I went in the bathroom and got a heating pad.
I feel asleep with it under my back.
An hour later I woke up sure I had third degree burns on my back.
By seven a.m. it was light out.
Morning had arrived.
Now,
not only was my back on fire, I also had a stomachache.
I can blame my back on the yoga,
but what caused the stomachache was something far more mysterious.
It was either a fruit roll-up,
some raisins,
or a vegan hamburger that had defrosted and been refrozen.
I don’t think I want to know.
I hobbled,
in unbelievable pain,
to the bathroom clutching my stomach in one hand
and holding my low back with the other.
I looked like some kind of arthritic train
chugging along to the first stop it could get to.
Now, eight hours later, neither my backache nor stomachache have gone away.
I want to go lie down,
but I know if I do I won’t wake up till dark
and then I’ll never fall asleep tonight.
So,
I’m going to stay awake and write,
and paint the ceiling,
and tell myself that tonight will be different,
tonight I will sleep.
I have to.