He stares at the ceiling. The ceiling returns his tired gaze.
He thanks it wth words that he cannot be sure if they’re heard.
Musts and must-nots compete for control of his mind.
It is dark everywhere that his near-focussed thinking can reach.
Rearranging the lines that he thinks in a story occurs.
It gets graded and lauded and when it moves on it’s forgotten.
The ceiling and he and the darkness add up to half-three
which he thinks is the time but it isn’t. The normal world sleeps.