I wanted to get into bed without carrying one final thought upstairs

Dear Delyara, But of course one came. Actually, several. The text I still hadn’t sent. The form I needed to sign. Whether I’d remembered the chicken in the freezer. If I’d been too short with my son at dinner. If the cough sounded worse tonight. If the bill would clear in time. By the time I got into bed, I felt as if my mind had brought an overnight bag full of unresolved little things with it. None of them huge. All of them enough to stop sleep arriving cleanly. That is what I miss most sometimes — the kind of tiredness that leads straight to sleep instead of through one more checkpoint of thought first.