explains it all

late at night is when a heavy weight will sit atop my chest.

just past bar close on the clock, i will begin the triggering masochistic monotony that will leave me somewhat hopeless by the time dawn breaks. 

i’ll read up on rape statistics and racism and addiction and gay bashing.

i’ll know i shouldn’t be up, that the world won’t adapt to my fucked up sleep schedule, but i have to read more. 

i’ll devour essays and articles and op-eds and case studies and court transcripts.

about black men sharing the advice passed down to them from their mothers. don’t go running at night. keep your hands visible. a cop is addressed as yes sir.

i’ll study the comment section of a popular teen site where girls who aren’t even old enough for a learner’s permit exchange tales of daily street harassment.

i will seek out sentences and paragraphs and pages of war profiteering, human trafficking, sb1070, cece mcdonald.

homelessness and reproductive rights and prisons and grand juries and health care and minimum wage employees working their asses off for absent billionaires.

and though it may be a cliché to lament on many of the world’s fucked up injustices in one sweeping statement, i’m not being glib. i’m not a college sophomore, my worldview recently cracked by marx or bell hooks.

sleep isn’t coming anytime soon, so i’ll read more on the cops who raped a woman in her apartment without consequence, the mother sentenced for providing her child a better education, george zimmerman supporters, the bootstrap capitalists, teenagers suicidal from the hate spewed by public figures and politicians being funded by corporations to suit their interests.

i will read more and more and feel powerless and empty.

i’ll sit sober and still, save for my jaw, which will be clenched to hold in what is probably just a slow, defeated sigh.

insomnia both is and isn’t the problem.