AT THE STOA

It is approximately 3:00 AM when your brain starts to huddle by itself within the vast empty hall of your skull, having reached the long, dark, teatime of man. The feeling is not unlike wanting to get a blanket if only to make the world stop worlding. No matter the events the previous day, and the inevitable alienated labor within the next few hours, come 3:00 you will have any or all of these thoughts running, directionless, in your head: 1. Had you known you'd end up awake until 3:00 AM, you should've gotten that piece done instead of wasting your life on the internet for seven hours and now it's too late to get it done so you'll just have a glass of a two-star-reviewed wine, or maybe thirty-five, damn the hangover and resulting similar unproductivity later. 2. The face of a random stranger you met on the street, and how she looks like standing against the wall of that particular hospital, looking down at her phone, with her beautiful face and all its moles; or th