La petite auberge

After eating in a French restaurant in New Jersey two months following our trip to Europe, I wake at 2:04 a.m. as if in Paris, but find the dark of Paramus, my mouth and throat dry. Jump out of bed, but there is no place to tour. Should I stay up in this dark of the North- eastern Hemisphere, put wash away, click with keys? I cannot turn on the light, my husband sleeps. I drink a glass of water, lie back under blankets, wonder what to make of this wide awake time, of this jet lag, my body coaxing me awake to another country's dawn? Are all our night wakings from that shining through the Earth's belly onto our inner lids, waking us to Vienna time, to Tokyo time, to Sydney time? This rotating Earth telling us it is always day.