Never marry an insomniac. You will have to mind yourself.

Have hem weights sewn into the lining of your garments, cure your skin with almond oil until it's bloated and the pores are brimming.

Purchase a large wooden-grained trunk and place it near your bed – it's for

safekeepings. (Obscurely, somewhere deep inside you know all this). Very soon

you won't be able to tell the days apart, you'll develop a tic and it will

distill at the centre (within the hive of your other small anomalies). You'll flail

in mild wind and when you speak minute silver-fish will consort in the pit of your throat.

Exquisite wife to the shade: the exact point you place your finger-tip on winter mornings, a raindrop will later stop and fret.

It's a wonder if you survive at all.

It will all end in the mouth; you'll blink, he'll stir. You'll practise lying very very still.

Peacock feathers

(your talismans) will blink back in their jars.