When I was little I used to stay up until 3 in the morning writing and drawing to my heart’s content. It was impossible for me to sleep as long as these perfect, poetic, and frightening visions were in my head. So every night I drew. I wrote. I created songs and stories and characters and I hardly slept but I was so happy. I needed the worlds I created as much as I needed the sleep that would inevitably come after the visions fully exhausted me. It was the only way I made sense of the world.

Tonight I found Billie knee deep in a notebook drawing 50+ animals in cages. She knew all their backstories. She could tell me their dreams and the names and fears of their future owners.
It was all there, plotted, in her head.

I asked her, “When are you going to sleep, love?”

She responded, “when I finish their stories.”

And thus the Jacoby cycle of insomnia repeats itself. We never were fans of unfinished fantasies…