Insomniac — Summary

morning a too-late prologue to night my eyes making me sad

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Dave Bonta's "Insomniac" is only two lines long, but it captures the exhausted feeling of a person who hasn't slept. The speaker describes morning as "a too-late prologue to night." That's a strange, backwards idea. A prologue is supposed to come at the start of something, yet here the morning shows up only after the night has already been lived through awake. Sleep never came, so the day begins as a kind of useless introduction to a night that has already passed, or perhaps to the next one that is already looming.

The second line turns from time to the body: "my eyes making me sad." The speaker seems to feel their own tired, sore eyes as a source of sadness, as if the eyes themselves are reporting the long night. The mood is weary, quiet, and a little hopeless. There's no drama here, just the flat, heavy feeling of watching the light return when you needed rest, not a new day.

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