end of the day

how do you define
the end of the day
when you frequently stay up
until the dawn?

for most people it’s
pretty easy. day’s end is eleven
o’clock, or midnight,
or maybe two or three
in the a.m. then
at seven or eight or nine or ten
the next day begins.

for me it’s a
whole different beast.
my whole life
I’ve been attempting
to be nocturnal and
usually succeeding,
except when school
or work or some other obligation made me
a grumpy, unwilling
morning lark.

in my journals – which
sadly have become quite
irrelevant since
the invention of livejournal,
Twitter, WordPress, i.e.
the internets – I used to
have a code. I would date-
and time-stamp
the entry and then write
“n.b.” for “night before”
or “m.o.” for “morning of”,
indicating whether or not
I had slept. so 5:25 am
was always n.b.. in retrospect
that should have been
obvious. but just in case
there was any confusion
on the part of posterity,
it seemed very important
to note that, because
it usually correlated
to my sad, angry, or otherwise
crazed and desperate mood.

now I’ve been free running
for quite a while,
my days and nights all
run together, blurring crazily
like a watercolor
left out in the rain.
so I often see
eight am from the wrong side
of the hourglass,
and I must fall back
on midnight to artificially
limit me. this day was done
yesterday, in the middle
of my waking period, though
it feels like it’s just beginning.
I’m spending tomorrow’s
borrowed time now, hoping no one
asks for it back.