Four in the bloody morning and the whole flat’s making that soft-stone symphony again, that tenement nightblend of ancient pipes tick-tacking behind the walls like they’re counting down the number of times I’ve failed to sleep, and the radiator did its slow metal croak as if clearing its throat for a sermon no one asked for, and the upstairs neighbour paced in those long soft ghoststeps people take when they’re talking to themselves or trying not to wake the dead, and the dark around me sat thick as old velvet, heavy with the breath of hundreds of nights lived in these rooms before I ever arrived, a kind of rent-included haunt clinging to the corners where the paint’s gone yellow and the memory of damp still hums, and I lay there on my half-warm mattress listening to the drip-drip, aye the maddening drip-drip, that tiny water-tap heartbeat from somewhere under the sink, ticking its wee Morse code of insomnia through the close, telling me in its patient syllable-speak ye’re awake lad, ye’re awake again, mind-yersel, mind-yersel, and I pressed my palms over my ears but the silence just got louder, because the city’s never fully quiet, not even at four, not even at dead-o’-night, the whole place murmured in low underbreaths like it’s dreaming on behalf of all of us who can’t.

     My thoughts did that scatter-jitter thing, flaring like startled pigeons in the dark rafters of the skull, wings slapping, feathers whispering, fragments of half-remembered faces and half-spoken promises, the odd flicker of a shadow that might be mine or might be some leftover scrap of the day refusing to let go, and the mind kept tugging at its own sleeve with images that didn’t make sense—an orange streetlamp blinking in slow death, a shard of glass in a palm that wasn’t mine now but once was, the soft sway of someone’s breath in a close I couldn’t quite place—and I told myself to breathe, slow it down lad, slow yer heid, but the night’s got that syrupy hold on me, thick and warm and slightly cruel, as if it knew I was too awake for dreaming and too tired for thinking.

     The room felt tilted, aye, that old tenement lean, nothing built straight in this city, floors slanting just enough to make the furniture question its loyalties, and in that slant I sensed the presence of the past tenants, the wee whisper of their sleep-sighs still trapped in the plaster, the oldhearted ache of someone who once sat exactly where I’m sitting now, staring at the same wall patch, listening to the same dripping rhythm and wondering if it meant anything or nothing or something in between, and I felt connected to them in that strange sleepless way, and time flattened into a soft sermon, me and all the ghosts-of-insomnia drifting together in the same slow hour.

     The drip-drip shifted pitch suddenly—plink-plunk-plink—as if deciding to try on a new identity, and I almost laughed because even the plumbing’s improvising tonight, and the city outside seemed to lean in, curious, and the stone walls breathed that tiny cold breath that told me dawn’s still miles off, and the wind rattled the loose pane in the sash window like a coin in a beggar’s cup, and somewhere a fox let out that unholy yowl they save for secret hours, a rough little prayer shouted into the sleeping world.

     And then, in the middle of all this, something inside me softened—just a fraction, just a shade—and the dark stopped feeling like an enemy and more like a cracked old tune the city told itself when it thinks nobody’s listening, and my chest unwound a knot I didn’t know was there, and the drip-drip turned into a lullaby of sorts, off-key but familiar, and I realized that maybe nights like this were less about sleeping and more about learning the shape of yer own restlessness, the way a musician learns the weight of silence between notes.

     The room held me gently for a breath, the pipes settled, the wind hushed, the night leant back. And for the first time in hours I felt the faintest slip of sleep catch at the edge of me like a small shy animal finally willing to approach.