I woke up in my apartment, alone, just before my alarm. I knew this because I could feel the day moving outside my window; the sun glowing on the back of my blinds, the garbage truck thundering down the alley, the auto body shop rolling up its doors. I left my eyes closed and listened to the neighbors stirring above me. I couldn't tell you what I was thinking, only that I didn't want to sleep anymore. Frankly, I couldn't. My skin crawled with misplaced anxiety; I was buzzing with it. There in bed that morning, like a thousand other mornings before, I was three years old again, lost in the grocery store. I was standing there, frozen, between a bin of Idaho potatoes and a stack of red onions.
I didn't call out to anyone; I was thirty-two years old, it was Monday, so I kicked the covers off and stood up. I exaggerated the difficulty in folding my bed back into the wall. I exaggerated