You’re Still The Last Person On My Mind Before I Go To Sleep

It takes me a long time to fall asleep.

Just like clockwork, as soon as the light switches off, my mind goes into overdrive: Unfinished tasks for work. That stupid thing I wish I hadn’t said to my mom. All the writing that there has to be done and no ideas to fill the page.

Now, I know that it isn’t uncommon for someone to overthink before they drift into sleep. We all have our worries, our fears. Being a person isn’t easy, and that’s a fact ingrained in our humanness. But even knowing this unity of the human condition doesn’t make 2 am feel any less lonely, or make the night sky look less endless.

So instead, I turn to thoughts of you.

Maybe it’s just habit, a muscle memory I never fully unconditioned. Maybe it’s the stubbornness of love, maybe it’s just plain pathetic. I’m not completely sure. All I know is that even after all this time, I still seem to land on you last and remember all the times that have passed and all about what could have been.

I’ll drift back to times where people thought we were dating, and this made me a little happy, but mostly sad because I knew it would never happen. The time we stood in my hallway to say goodbye, only a few feet away from one another, but with our hearts millions of miles apart. Mine had open arms. Yours was walking out the door.

I’ll think of your kind eyes, your calloused hands. Our fights. Our last kiss, the one you don’t remember. I’ll fall asleep to these memories of you, moments that are far buried in the past, and I always wake up feeling more tired than before.