It's 3 AM. The air is calm this early in the morning. Streetlights filter into my room, casting onto my curtains the silhouettes of trees that stand silently just outside my window. I shift my head restlessly across my sweat-covered pillow into another uncomfortable position. The faintest breeze seeps warmth into my covers, and for a puzzling moment it seems that the window is open and it is summer again, but the buzzing of the radiator abruptly puts these thoughts to rest.

Only I cannot rest; I cannot sleep. I toss and turn and kick and squeeze my eyes shut. Still the hot blood of longing flashes through my veins. All of my mind and body has converged into a singular fixation on a desire I cannot comprehend. I throb with it, I rage with it, but what is it? I only know what I feel, that suddenly I am filled with the sensation of wanting something, someone, or some place, or some delicious dish.

Without knowing what it is, I flail around hopelessly. Frustration transfigures into an increasingly blind desire for violence. A bloodcurdling cry wells up in my throat, threatening to break out at any moment. Now I have the urge to smash the window, break the chair, and pound the wall until my fists bleed black. But there is something else, another part of me weakening inside, as if an internal organ has shriveled up and atrophied in the languid blackness that envelops me. Even as an implacable passion wells up in my chest, an even stronger lethargy presses my conscience back against a wall of inaction. My mind unthinking, the insidious depression descends, unthinking still, no reason to guide me, I'm in its suffocating grasp, wherefore unreason clouds the inky pallor of what is forever indeterminate. There is no guiding aroma entreating me to the savoury filet mignon of truth, sweet truth.

And you. You say that you have become empty inside. You cry out for fulfillment, for deliverance. I've given you all I could and yet you still will not be satisfied. Don't you know that the pain you feel, I feel it too, deep inside my gut, grinding away with the fury of some alien animal terror. Be still, my aching stomach. You anguish is mine, I toss and turn as you grumble and churn. What sparks in the riotous expression of your longing have extinguished themselves in pain? Which ones yet fly and elude me with the cruel caprice of what still could be? I have waited too long to act upon this insatiable hunger, to do what I've always felt, or have felt for four hours now, ever since I digested dinner.

O give me love, give me grace over this longing, this hunger for food, for a snack, for life itself.