Sometimes an hour more of reading does more to restore the soul than an hour less of sleep depletes it. Perhaps a little bit more daydreaming will work wonders for the world we’ll wake up in. Consider that maybe less time spent in reality makes it that much more tolerable.

My overworked brain, churning to make sense of the stream of consciousness of anyone in cell signal, creates fallacies that erode my good nature. Suddenly I must contend with the fabricated woes of my exhausted psyche. Out of nowhere, another opinion to consider. I spend so little time listening to my heartbeat. Pulsing in the darkness as my weary body finds stillness for the first time all day. It’s an extraordinary sound, like nothing else. And it’s drowned by the white noise of an army of messengers waiting to bear their bad news.

Too infrequently do I consider the steady course of the blood moving through my veins. The constant firing of brilliant connections in my unmatched brain. The worlds that cloud behind my eyes and offer solace from the one I find myself in. Too seldom do I seek respite outside of the ones prescribed to me. I must stay up past my bedtime at the mercy of a good book. I’ll have to spend more time in the little pockets my mind creates for me. I’ll have to lay still more often in the stillness of the cool November air and listen to my heartbeat. Its drumming is a promise. “This is all that really matters,” it tells me. Everything else will shift. All that I have, I will part with. But until its final beat, warm blood will find ways through my body and little sparks in the darkness will collide in my head. All other things will find silence someday. This is all I’ll ever have.