4am

I wake up at 1am and again at 1:30. I wake up at 3am and get up to pee. I
lay in the bed and try not to fidget because Kelly is such a light sleeper and
I don’t want to waken him. The cat is like a buzzing electric blanket on my
head. Finally at 4am I give up. I carefully extract myself from the bungee
cords of the dog & cat and carefully, so carefully, trying not to make any
movement or sound, slither out of bed. Down to the living room I go. Now comes
after me Misty, to sit on the arm of the couch and stare. Followed by the
heated chainsaw purring Spooky. Followed shortly after by the “clickey
clickety click” of Samson on the wood floors. No way is Kelly going to
sleep through the mass exodus. And of course he doesn’t. In a minute I hear him
going into the bathroom. Then a sleepy “where are you?” I tell him to
go back to bed, I’ll be there soon. I let Samson out to pee. As I stand in the
window watching for his return, I am looking across at my neighbour’s house. I
see the green ghost light of her TV in her kitchen window. I see her shadow
pass back and forth. She is awake, also. I look away because it isn’t polite to
invade her privacy. And I know that she can also see me, a dark shadow in the
doorway. I wonder, if we could see through walls, would we see an entire host
of night people roaming the dark rooms, or  moving from bed to bathroom and back again? People in the night, moving silently by the light of the street lamps streaming into kitchen windows? Ghost people. Dark, shadow people. Awake at 4am.