I thought it was taken
a part lost in sleeplessness.
I thought I’d never had it,
or I’d carelessly lost it.

Then there was another,
someone else, searching blindly.
They swore true it was stolen,
by circumstances I couldn’t know.

Then there were more. And more.
And the ever-growing number.
Something taken from all of us,
or just a collective delusion?

Lost in sleep? Lost to misplacement.
Who knows. Who cares. It’s gone.
Or perhaps, just perhaps,
it has been absent all along.