Silence

It's after midnight and I find myself unable to sleep. There is a type of silence you discover when you live in the desert, silence that isn't really silence. A silence so quiet that it makes you acutely aware of everything around you. A tap dripping, the fridge as it adjusts to the nightime temperature drop, the house as it creaks and moans, the quiet noises of nocturnal animals. Once you are tuned into these noises that can only be heard in the silence they become as loud as the trams that used to pass by my bedroom window when I lived in North Fitzroy. They keep me awake. And so I stop fighting my sleeplessness and I step outside to breathe in the night air. I'm glad I did becasue it is the most miraculous night for stars. There is no moon in the sky, not yet at least. The Milky Way is a cloudy white blur that stretches from one side of the sky to the other. The sky is glittering from the sheer volume of celestial bodies visible on a night like this. All of a sudden sleeplessness doesn't seem so bad and I am glad for the noises that have kept me awake.