2:14 AM. This is my time. No music, no voices, no distractions. The world outside does not exist. I can only see my face in the black window, lit up ethereal with the white glow of my laptop screen, curiously inorganic and smooth. Only the sound of my breathing and the wind against the side of the house. The only world that exists is the one that I create, and I am fully immersed inside this tangle of text, the smell of patchouli and dust and heat. I feel the humming sun. I hear the grunt of camels and the rhythmic clash of dancer's cymbals in the spice market of an exotic country whose borders are blurred with sleep and worry.
    But tomorrow won't come. This is my time, lusciously private, self-intimate, removed from reality. Time has stopped. My thoughts are loud in the dark infinity of my bedroom. I can feel a heartbeat under these keys.
    Let me out.
    I have a family that I've never met. We are every lighted window in the middle of the night, every smooth breath and patter of keys. We are filtered from the population of sleepers by the seduction of our own minds and what they have to say when there's nothing else to hear.