A phosphorescent ticking sound announced in the room that it was midnight. Once again, you would close your eyes, saying goodnight to me. You would let yourself fall into the infinity of your dreams, and I would immediately begin the night, wondering if we would ever have the chance to meet. My eyes never closed since I started talking to you. Insomnia dragged me down even more when the noises began. Only I could hear them. As the darkness grew, they became more intense, and madness clawed at my scarce reason. At first, I spent entire nights rubbing my ears against the walls, trying to discover the origin of those noises similar to the sound water makes when it hits an unknown surface. A liquid noise that also echoed. It was eternal hours, going millimeter by millimeter across the walls; but I gave up when one morning, I woke up in the middle of a pool of blood that was flowing from my left ear. I hadn’t realized when I started bleeding; the exhaustion was such that it left me no awareness to perceive reality. Everything turned into a dark scab that prevented me from moving for a moment, until it suddenly absorbed and left no trace.

The next day, you wrote to me and encouraged me to sleep early, as if knowing what was happening. That night, you slept deeply again in that super comfortable bed of yours, while I faded, tortured by those spiral noises that burrowed deep into my eardrums. I tried to close my eyes and sleep, but the liquid noise cut through me. It became more intense when I stayed still, when the darkness swallowed me.

One night, the darkest of all, I turned on the lights, drew the curtains, and let the moonlight enter through the window. It occurred to me that perhaps this noise didn’t live with light. The moonlight and the light from the bulbs merged into an almost metallic luminous mass that suddenly flooded the room. The noise, which by then could be heard up to ten kilometers away, began to drown, to die little by little. Half a sigh of relief was enough for the noise to return with more force, as if it had been deceived. I concluded that the natural light of day was the only thing capable of achieving silence. The days were short, and the nights were an endless ordeal. My eyes cracked and dried out even more, becoming pale.

I condemned myself to stay awake for the rest of my nights. Resigned to enduring perpetual insomnia, I began to observe everything closely. It was the first time I did so since I started talking to you. I could see in your photos that your body was made of ethereal and warm light, which bothered my eyes so much, yet I still couldn’t close them. The contours of your silhouette were sharp, and that pale clothing of yours cut through my darkness. You had in your hair and mouth some shiny, iridescent butterflies. Your hands were thin and very white, they probably sweated silver mercury.

While you slept, you surely filled yourself with peace every second, and your transparent eyelids revealed a soft and sweet gaze, different from your daytime hardness.

I realized that through your eyelids, surely, your past lovers could see your dreams, as if they were watching television. And I also discovered that I wasn’t in your dreams. For a moment, while I thought of you, I forgot about the noise. Then I wanted to hug you tightly, and I didn’t want to write to you for fear of waking you up. After thinking about hugging you, I began to feel a little better. Something strange happened inside me, like an internal effervescence. The scar on my ear opened and began to bleed violently when I pressed my ear against my left arm: I discovered the sound of my steady heartbeat, and without much will, I heard the whispers of my blood running through my arteries, heard my blood circulating, hitting the walls of kilometers and kilometers of veins and arteries.

That noise no longer hurt me. I already knew what it was. Even though I started to feel sleepy and tired, I didn’t want to fall asleep because I had to go to work in a few hours. Even so, I cleaned my ear and started packing my things. I ran out of my room. The dawn put gray fog everywhere; the streets were empty. I took a taxi and felt so warm inside, like in an incubator; it was like being newly born. The driver had the radio on at a very low volume. My eyes returned to their color and moistened slightly with a certain sadness. I closed them. The other songs, whispered by the radio, and the sound of an engine moving away, lulled me to sleep.

Finally, I fell asleep.