While We Sleep

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He had always thought of sleep as what came when the day was finished. You turned off the lamp, pulled up the covers, and disappeared. As a boy, he resisted it because too much remained to imagine. As a young man, he surrendered from exhaustion. Later, sleep became precious, arriving some nights easily and others just beyond the door. He lay awake listening to the old house settle, the refrigerator humming, a car passing, rain touching the roof. The clock moved through hours no one seemed to own. Two seventeen. Three eleven. Four-oh-six. Strange countries on the map of night.

Sometimes he wondered where we went when we slept. Scientists had answers about neurons, memory, and the brain’s strange housekeeping, and he believed them. But sleep seemed to loosen the knots of the day. The dead walked through kitchens. Dogs came running from distant rooms. Mothers were young; fathers had strong hands. A demolished house stood again beneath summer trees. Dreams accepted resurrection without surprise. The dead entered through an unlocked door, sat beside us, and stayed until morning. Perhaps that was why waking carried a small sadness. For one impossible hour, everything lost had been found.

Near dawn, sleep approached. The room softened at its edges, and midnight’s enormous worries shrank like shoes scattered beside the bed. Tomorrow would bring its machinery, the news, appointments, and questions about the world’s direction, but none of it needed him yet. Outside, the earth turned toward morning without asking his help. He closed his eyes. A bird, confused by the hour, tried one uncertain note, then fell silent.

He understood then that sleep was not surrender but trust: each night we close our eyes on an unfinished world, believing morning will find us again.

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