a low thrumming at the base of my skull, not quite a pain but a persistent presence, a kind of internal current flowing and pushing against the very back of my awareness, and then the bodega light across the street, that unwavering sentinel, just wavered, a quick blink in its otherwise perpetual glare, and it was barely a breath, barely a moment, but it was enough to unsettle the whole landscape of my perception, making me realize how much i’d come to rely on that absolute, unyielding glow as some kind of anchor for my own relentless internal projector, the one that beams all those unanswered questions onto the dark canvas of my insomnia, the ones i try to soothe with chamomile and the heavy weight of old philosophers but that still demand their due, demanding to be seen, to be acknowledged even if they offer no solutions, just more variations on the theme of existence and what it means to truly be awake when the rest of the world has decided to dim itself for a few hours.