Some small sound will wake me – my dog taking a stroll around the apartment, the curtains snapping in the breeze. I used to get frustrated, but now I find a strange ease in it. It’s my time to research things I’ve been thinking about, work out story ideas, make minor plans.
At 2am, the world is so strange. It feels sometimes that it’s noisier than the middle of the day: summer drunks, beeping trucks, speeding buses. There are always a few lights on in the building across the street. Someone watching TV. Someone smoking on a balcony, shifting from side to side. Years ago, when I first moved here, I used to see a person sitting in an armchair reading under the light of a lamp. It comforted me, somehow. I wonder now if that person has moved away, maybe learned how to sleep.