Coveting all you know see and hear

I rest my head on fat fluffy sheep in a grey grey world and I wonder if everyone thinks this city is grey or if it's just the restless. The ones who want to leave, want something substantial, meaningful and new. I slept in a bed that was not my own, which is unusual for more reasons than not making it home last night. I so rarely actually sleep anywhere else. Sometimes I think I'll wake up and everything will be wrong. Everything I think I know will have gone because I dared shut my eyes and relax a little. It's the same if I'm sleeping alone or if I'm sleeping next to someone I love or hate. It's for this reason I remember the places I can sleep in vividly.

When I was young my cousins lived in Fintry, back of beyond with a sprawling garden the likes I'd never seen before. There was a tyre swing and a wood and a friend on a farm with blind man's buff and a pony that was far, far too big. They still had the cat then, the puppies would come later, and the big sister taught us to make paper fortunetellers while we fed the old dog pringles and watched Hook. I had the big sister's bed, she slept on a camp bed. Worn out by running from a bull that never really acknowledged our presence and through adventure courses that wound through fields the younger cousin was pretty sure were hers I wrapped myself in pink blankets surrounded by shelves of junk that wasn't mine but could have been. I awoke every morning to the big sister's legs peeking over the end of my bed as she twisted her feet around and watched the muscles change shape.

There was a hotel room in Vermont. Pine trees and mountains dominating the windows. Expanses of white cloud duvets and pillows. A moment of clarity in a terrible year.

A futon in the spare room of a friend was more like an entire blanketed floor. I curled up between the computer and a prom dress with a notebook and a pen. Drunken scrawls trailed off the page onto my hands as my eyelids dropped suddenly.

A single bed before he upgraded to a double. He slept on a mattress on the floor under his cat and we both woke up early and built a fort, shutting ourselves in against time and practicalities and all common sense. Honey loops and flicks of the cat's tail against our cheeks. In the double I was always wide awake.

So tired this afternoon, but not really tired just muggy. I lean my head back against the back of the seat and shut my eyes against the glass on the sheep, hearing her voice though I didn't want to as she always announced the presence of the wooly animals back when we were inseparable and always awake. There's really not much to say today, I'm always quiet after a night full of too many words. Lying upside down against my wall, typing on my stomach there's nothing much to say and I like that.