I have not slept in five days.

If you are reading this, it's possible you know me. Or that you know that fact about me. But then agian, maybe you don't know me at all.

When I say that I've not slept in five days, I don't mean that I've slept poorly, or fitfully, that I've grabbed a couple hours here or there, but am still, on the whole, sleep deprived. I mean I have not slept. For an instant, for a moment. In five days.

You know how other people wait for a miracle during their lives? They wait for the lottery, or for the small miracle of the end of the workday. They wait to find the perfect pair of jeans. They wait to hear that they're pregnant. The pray to hear they aren't. I wait like that every day for sleep to come back to me.

When I drove to work this morning, grateful for somewhere to go, I saw traffic lights in the distance twittering along the concrete horizon line. It was so beautiful, this moment, that seemed like it belonged only to me. The morning was steel blue grey, and the lights looked so warm. They began to synch up to the soft swedish voice lilting in my car, and I felt so incredibly happy.

And just then a crow flew across my eyeline. His flightpath took him to the county highway sign just to my right. He cocked his head when he looked at me, and the world slowed down. All as if to say, remember you are fallible. I wonder if he knows who's been stealing my sleep?