how_to_sleep tender_square when a man you don't trust lives a floor above you in your house? mom says i'm going to have to forgo the earplugs, but i need silence to sleep. the outdoor cameras are armed with their shitty black and white dpi catching the neighbourhood cats slink back and forth across the front walk. i leave my phone silenced lest the dings for these unimportant things wake me. the man above me shuffles across the floor for hours, accidentally drops things with sudden starts. i can't settle, not when he's shifting. the louisville_slugger stands at my bedside. i close my bedroom door and shove a plastic stop behind it, preventing whomever tries to enter from getting in (or buying me more seconds to spring to waking). the room is hot but i don't want to be pantsless in a fight. i put my earplugs in, clutch the only blue jay i trust and drift. 230427 ... raze slither onto your side. face a wall that's lined with books and dusty digital optical media. don't turn your head to look at the clock. pound on your pillow to make space for the ear that's learned to love you less with the encroachment of your middle years. pull the covers over your head to nullify what little light still leaks into the room after you've smothered your windows with improvised soundproofing material. listen to the kick drum that lives inside your chest, tapping out time through the palm of your left hand. pray for a reprieve from the panic that bullies your brain after midnight and the air horn that's spent the last six months causing more harm than you thought any sound ever could. wait for whatever strange films the night sees fit to deliver, and hope you remember your lines when the camera cranes its neck to leer at you. 230428 what's it to you? who go blather from