Nocturne

My eyes glaze over and in vain, I attempt to blink away the heaviness in my eyelids.
No trace of caffeine remains in my bloodstream to offer a spark of energy.
With face aglow in the stark light of my laptop screen,
Sleep beckons me, but dutifully, I resist her siren call.

I lament this solitary work and these hours beholden to the EMR,
A greedy thief of time and sleep.
My mind, weary from the tedium of lab review, checkboxes, and refills, starts to wander.
My thoughts stray from my inbox to the song that surrounds me.

In the darkness, I muse at the quiet opera softly playing in my bedroom.
A nocturne of staccato clicks and key strokes set against a background of peaceful night sounds:
The crescendo-decrescendo of my husband’s deeply relaxed breath,
The steady, rolling rumble emanating from the slumbering cat curled at my feet,
My children’s sweet soprano sighs from the next room, surely inspired by sugar plum visions.

I acquiesce at my contribution to this tune,
The monotonous, never-ending metronome of my typing.
But there is a lonely, complacent beauty in this lullaby,
That serves as soundtrack to my nightly rendezvous with the EMR.

When the work is finally done, my concert ends.
I close my laptop with a sense of accomplishment,
The final cadenza of the evening’s performance.
“Bravo,” I whisper to myself as I succumb to sleep’s curtain call.