What the Night Knows

I’ve come to believe that the night has a memory.

Not in the way we think of remembering — not names, or dates, or faces. But in a deeper sense. Like the way a stone remembers the shape of the river, or a room holds the quiet that followed a slammed door.

Some nights stretch longer than they should. Not because time behaves any differently — but because something else doesn’t let go. You lie down, but the night won’t lie down with you. It stirs, paces, scratches behind the walls of your chest.

There’s no real cause, of course. Not one that anyone else would see. You wake up, you work, you reply to texts. You’re not falling apart. You’re just… fraying. Quietly. From the inside out.

People think sleeplessness is about thoughts — too many, too loud. But that’s only part of it. Sometimes it’s not what you think, it’s what you don’t let yourself think. The thoughts you don’t touch because they carry too much weight. The memories you walk around like broken glass.

It’s strange how silence can feel crowded. Especially around 3 a.m. The walls get thicker. The bed, smaller. There are nights when even the body turns traitor — aching without reason, curling like it’s hiding something.

And maybe it is.

There are things the body knows before the mind can say them out loud. Things it stores in the back, between muscle and breath. A look that lingered too long. A name that still presses against the roof of the mouth but never gets said. An apology that keeps asking to be born, but dies in the throat every time.

No one teaches you how to mourn the things you couldn’t hold onto — or worse, the ones you let go.

It’s a quiet guilt. Not the kind that yells. The kind that watches. Waits. Leaves the lights on. It’s in the way you stare too long at a door that won’t open. In the way a song catches you off-guard and you have to sit down, even though no one else heard it the way you did.

Insomnia wears many clothes. For some, it’s a racing mind. For others, it’s just stillness that won’t settle. A twitch behind the eyelid. The sudden sound of one’s own breath. The pillow shifting like it knows too much.

There’s no drama to it, not really. Just repetition. The night moves the same way every time. Floor to ceiling, shadow to shadow. Nothing happens, and yet something keeps not happening. That’s the part that hurts most — what doesn’t return. What stays lost.

People say time heals. Maybe. But some wounds don’t want to be healed. They want to be witnessed.

So the night becomes a kind of witness.

And you, unwillingly, its custodian.

You learn to carry the hours gently. To fold the sheets a certain way. To drink tea that’s already gone cold. To leave space beside you, just in case.

And sometimes, though you’ll never admit it, you whisper things into the dark — not expecting answers, but needing the echo. A name. A sorry. A “did you know?” that doesn’t need a reply.

It’s not sadness. Not entirely. It’s something else.

A kind of hollow loyalty to what once was. A refusal to let go of a doorframe you once leaned against. A birthday that no longer comes. A hand you still instinctively reach for when you’re about to fall.

The night doesn’t judge. It just listens.

And that, in a way, is the kindest thing it does.

So if you ever find yourself awake — not just physically, but awake in that other way, the way that makes your bones remember and your breath pause — know this:

You’re not the only one who carries silence like a second skin.

You’re not the only one the night remembers.

And somewhere, someone — perhaps a boy staring at a ceiling, or a woman counting the creaks in the floor — is awake with you.

Not next to you.

But with you.

In the way only the night understands.