My father once told me that I used to frighten him. I was a baby, and he’d sometimes check on me in the early hours only to find my dark eyes wide-awake, and staring silently from behind the wooden rail of my crib.

Not a lick of sleepiness in my pudgy face.

9:44 PM

Is what the birth certificate says.

I’m nearing thirty, and my eyes are still just as dark as ever. Darker actually, black espresso, seasoned by loss and the consequences of watching your father’s casket be lowered into the ground at twenty six.

That does something to you, shifts the chemicals in your brain and fucks with your sleep all together.

If you ask me… I think I was born with a gene, one unexplored much by science and activated by life events outside of our control.

I have more memories than I can account for as an exhausted middle schooler, a thirteen year old slugging her feet over the beige linoleum lining the hall.

Just one more class.

Just one more hour.

Just one more fucking minute.

Falling asleep in the passenger seat of my mom’s car, or on those blue seats of New York City buses.

And in high school, I learned my friend’s deepest secrets after midnight because I was awake to answer her call. Who lost her virginity? Wait, she’s sleeping with Mr. Nicoli? That’s so creepy! Isn’t that illegal? Well, she’s a year off the age of consent, I doubt anyone cares. I still think we should report it.

Mr. Nicoli was in fact fired some time after that.

Every last one of them would fall asleep before me, and I would lie there, sinking into the mattress, nerves prickling my stomach with the fact that I couldn’t seem to get sleepy when everyone else around me did—

Knowing the next day would be a groggy, living-dead nightmare.

A nightmare!

College was a little easier, being that I got through my degree by only taking evening classes. Yes, it did take me a little longer to earn the credits. It was a massive accomplishment, but the day before graduation, I spent my night turning my cap into a bejeweled activist message about making education affordable for all.

And oh was it cute. Everyone wanted a picture of the back of my head. A little rebellion started by a local vampire.

Now I can see the dark circles under my dark eyes, barely awake for that special day, trying to celebrate like everyone else when in actuality I was up way, way, wayyy past my bed time.

They say humans like me evolved from ancient warriors who would watch over the tribe, protecting them from beasts and the sheen of white fangs in the night. Sounds cool, doesn’t it?

We’re most energized after lunch at midnight, and after teatime at two in the morning.

And minutes before your 6:00 AM alarm rings, I have fallen into REM.

While you dream, all I want to do is create.

I want to go for a nice jog… And I would, if I’d been born a man, what freedom to not have to worry about who might snatch me off the sidewalk.

Sigh.

Anyway, I don’t need to write a story, because this prompt is me. To a T.

I am the human, evolved to be nocturnal.

I wake at three in the afternoon and pull out my lime colored ear plugs, slide off my weighted eye mask, and do yoga stretches in bed. All in absolute darkness thanks to blackout curtains. After that it’s just a matter of waiting for the sun to set so that my head doesn’t ache as badly from the daylight, and I can get to work.

This has become a way of life for me now, even though I’ve tried trading Night Owl for Morning Lark time and time again. My body doesn’t like it.

Never has. I mean I was born this way.

9:44 PM

Is what the birth certificate says.