The Cartographer of Small Hours

At three, the house becomes a country I have never quite mapped — the hallway lengthens, the kitchen grows a new door onto weather I did not know was waiting.

I trace the edges of a glass of water, reading the meniscus like a border, and the cat, that small scholar of thresholds, watches me as if I were the one who had wandered in from elsewhere.

Somewhere a refrigerator hums its one blue syllable of devotion. Somewhere a streetlight practices the difficult art of staying on long past being needed.

I used to think insomnia was failure, the body refusing its assignment. Now I suspect it is a kind of listening — the hours offering me their inventory, asking what I would like to keep.

By dawn, the map will fold itself away. The kitchen will become ordinary again, the cat asleep on its known continent. But for a while, I belonged to the small hours, and they, briefly, belonged to me.