Oh I can't sleep.

I know it isn't even quite one, but I can tell by the buzz under my skin, the hum in my head, its not going to happen.
Between 3 and 6 am I hate hotels. In a building full of people, you're completely alone. In the dark and the quiet, the room becomes an island. Nothing exists outside, and if that was comforting before, when I first got here, its awful now, with my head full of nightmares and no one familiar breathing deeply on the couch, or turning over upstairs, or snoring faintly through the floorboards.
I miss my boys.
I miss lying in my little bed under the stairs, drifting in the smoke between asleep and dreams. Hearing Stephen's key in the lock, the shudder of the front door closing behind him. He comes over and sits down, sometimes with his coat still on, and tells me about his day, or a funny thing he heard, or the last thing he was thinking of before the bar got rushed. Sometimes he sings a snatch of a song that is stuck in his brain and asks me to identify it.
Whatever happens after that, weather he goes upstairs to bed, or settles on the couch to watch a few episodes of M.A.S.H., weather I get up with him and we smoke and talk, or he goes out again to meet someone, weather I stay up the rest of the night, or fall into a fitful sleep, hearing those sounds, his key in the lock, his low voice in the dark, it make me think everyone everywhere that I love is for the moment safe and sleepy, and my chest doesn't feel so pressed and heavy.

I miss Robbie in the mornings. I am always awake when he wakes up, but I lay under the covers with my head in the pillow and pretend I could slip back to sleep just any second. He comes downstairs trying to be so so quiet. He thinks I am asleep as he tries to tiptoe past and not crash into anything, and I smile to myself. He makes a quiet racket setting up the coffee machine and then he goes back upstairs.
When he comes down again I say, "Hi baby," in my smiley sleepy voice, and he gives me a quick hug and grabs coffee and goes to work, or else he crawls in bed and cuddles for 5 seconds before he makes me get up and play with him.
Robbie the sun, and Stephen the moon. In this way I divide my days.
Except now I live in hotels, and when I go back to home, I have my own apartment, and a big bed, and a room with a door and everything.
But I miss them.

Hotel USA

You don't need ID yet to travel by train. You can take the yellow line north and west to some small town far out from the city. Find a hotel where they won't ask your name. Pay in cash and they will give you a room key that's still a real key, cold cut metal on a steel ring, painted with a little white number.
Climb the stairs to the fourth floor, which is the top floor, so its the furthest from anywhere. Close the door behind you. Twist six locks, and if there is a phone, unplug it from the wall. The windows are already closed, white shades down behind thick white curtains. Everything outside this room does not exist anymore.
Everything inside is white and scuffed and nothing smells like anything. If there are paintings they are just lines and colors. They don't remind you of anything. There is tea on the counter, small bags wrapped in paper, next to a white chipped porcelain coffee cup. Pour yourself some hot water from the dispenser, just to watch the steam curl up. It moves like dreaming. Rest seems to be a thing you could hold, distance is a sound that maybe you could hear if your head was clear and empty like this room.
Peel your clothes down. Leave them on the floor. No one cares about those things anymore. Leave the bathroom door open while you take a piss. No one exists to listen. The shower is running for seventeen minutes before you even get in because you like watching the steam twist into the white room. The clouds and curls bring comfort to you.
Everything beyond this tiny room has just switched off. This is everything you want. The water is hot. You laugh out loud; hot water is good. The sound bounces off the tiles and you smile to hear the sound of yourself happy. The bed will be soft. The white towels are clean and so are the sheets. Everything outside the empty walls has ceased to be.
Ivory soap and mint toothpaste. Your skin smells like a stranger. Naked in bed, you have no identity. The TV is off because quiet is better. You're no longer a person who watches television, and in the morning you will not read the paper.
The world outside here has turned out the lights. The dark doesn't scare you like it did before. You can dissolve. Inside the dark, inside the white walls, all you can hear is your own pulse. Beating heart, slowing breath, a building music inside your head. The swelling sound drowning out everything but this island. All the world is in this room. You catch yourself smiling again. It will end soon. But now there is this:
Yourself inside the shell of a white room, ivory smells, the folding light, steam and clean sheets, ironed smooth, and the music inside.
Hold it in your mind. Write it on a folded piece of paper and tuck it into your back pocket. Keep it in your mouth under your tongue behind your teeth. Press it into a pattern and tattoo it in black ink under your skin to remember when you are called back again.