It is hot. The sound of the crickets is loud from the garden immersed in the tropical night. I tried to keep my eyes closed and find the sleep within my thoughts but it does not work. I put my hands under my head and look at the ceiling through the thin mosquito net which hags over the bed. I follow the lines drawn by the shadow of the window frame. I close my eyes once again but know that the sleep will not come. It has been like this for some time now.

Somebody walking in the silent street. I can hear the flip flops which are dragged on the asphalt with a sound that is magnified by the outside silence. A late night in on of the few bars in the barangay where we live. I wonder whether a ways to claim the sleep back the sleep would be to go to one of those bars or maybe one in town and get really drunk after so many years. Then I think about the headache the next day and the churning stomach and decide that is not a good idea after all.

I turn to my right. She is sleeping peacefully. Breathing softly. She is under the thin cotton blanket . No matter what temperature we are living in she still needs to be under a blanket.

‘Good you can sleep’, I whisper to her and turn my head and find that the shadows of the window frame are still there on the ceiling, above the blue mosquito net. The crickets still singing. All quiet. The flip flops that passed next to the house hopefully in front of  a door and the man or woman wearing them sleeping inside a house and finding some peace.

I take the wrist watch to check the time: 2:21. I decide to get up.  Lift the side of the mosquito net, put my feet on the warm wooden floor and sit for few seconds thinking what to do. I stand up and get my laptop. I glance at the bed before closing the door and switch on the light of the kitchen table. I sit, lift the screen up and start the laptop.

I have had this idea in mind for some days now. Instead of trying to find a sleep which was not there and why not to start writing short stories, maybe following the letters of the alphabet as Goffredo Parise did in a book that I loved very much: Sillabario.