The hour the tower forgets you

There is a window. Not every night, only the ones you can't sleep through.

Somewhere past three, nothing is asking you for anything. No messages. No calls. No feed refreshing itself on your behalf.

Switch the phone to airplane mode and the tower stops hearing from you, because you stopped answering. That is the hour the tower forgets you. You make it yourself.

It's when I do the work I don't want watched.

I will not tell you the time. You will find it the way I did, by failing to sleep enough nights in a row that the pattern surfaces on its own.

The network counts everything you let it count. Past three, you can let it count nothing.

Write the want on the inside of your wrist, where the watch reads your pulse. With the radio off, nobody logs it but you. Then wash it off and let the want go to work, unwatched, the only condition under which it ever does.

Do not check it tonight. The checking is a ping. The ping is a leash.

Check it a month out. Once, in the log.