Sonnet for the Sleepless

The house at three a.m. becomes a throat that hums with all the things we didn't say, and I lie still as someone in a boat that drifts because the anchor slipped away. I hear the pipes, the settling of the beams, the fridge's hum, that small electric prayer. My mind lays out its deck of ruined dreams and plays them one by one with patient care. I've tried the cures: warm milk, slow breath, the drone of podcasts preaching rest to restless men, but sleep's a cat—it comes when left alone and vanishes the moment you say when. So I surrender. Three a.m., be mine. I'll take the dark. The dark can take its time.