I was a bad sleeper as a kid, would lie stretched

out on the living room floor, below the couch

my mother called a bed, and watch horror films

until dawn spangled its forbidden glint from the edges

of our garbage bag curtains. 
I have spent so long refusing peace by catastrophizing

every possible thing:
the marginalia of mould on the bathroom grout,

cracks in the drywall, beacon of structural slump

in our house, and the rat in the crawl space pumping

plague from its small anatomy, it’s best life a noose

around ours. 
I am pleased that when I die, this ambition for misery

will die with me. I spend mornings calculating the distance

from my traumatic source material to my son. It gives

a favourable percentage. 
These days, I fall asleep to an ASMR artist giving me a virtual

lobotomy exam, the tap tapping of her nails like my cats’ claws

on the floor during her 3am bestial haunt of the house, yowling

her newly demented mind into blackness. 
A different kind of sadness begets a different kind of joy.

The end will start beginning again and I will allow myself

to be embarrassed by my own joy, for new comforts

to dilute some of the gloom.