dreaming of sleep

Battling mosquitoes and mugginess. Traversing the mud and muck in flooded yards, examining damaged homes. Two hours in Chicago traffic and ten hours hopping in and out of a van, approaching strangers and asking them about their problems.

Despite two days of this, the confusion of sleeping in four different rooms on four different beds in four nights, the dislocation of an unfamiliar city and the isolation of hotel living, despite all that or perhaps because of it, sleep comes not easily. Even now, knowing that each minute clattering away on the keyboard is a minute not asleep, a moment not resting for tomorrow’s tour, sleep resists my efforts to cling to a glimmer of drowsiness.

My eyelids close easy, but behind them, the blissful slumber so often promised by the hotels in which I stay, continues to elude.