Staying up Late

The numbers on the clock were blazing in lime green, bright enough that " 2:49 am " continued to haunt me.. in a ghostly flash, with every blink of my eyes. Two thirty-nine.. that meant one hour of sleep before I had to wake up for mangala arati. I would finish dressing Radha Madhana- Mohana and cleaning the pujari by 8 am. That meant half an hour to create a PowerPoint for the Biology plant hormone presentation at 9 am. And twenty four hours to begin my 20 page research paper due the next day... five sources... twenty pages.. twenty-four hours... ten minute presentation... thirty minutes... one hour of sleep...
It was "3:00 am " when the tears dropped to my hands and I realized that I had been sitting on the floor... against the wall for too long... eleven minutes wasted... 50 minutes of sleep. Although I was crying, Krsna was still smiling on the wall... his face unlit by the small bedside lamp... i could only catch those beautiful smiling lips... reddened eyes glancing with intensity. Radharani was shining... her complexion defeated the darkness in the room... and her smile was even more beautiful. I walked over to the poster.... right underneath it I had placed The Nectar of Devotion. I sat on the bed... let the pages flip through my hand. The breeze cooled the hot tears dragged on my face. The book smelled like sandalwood... it had spent 6 years next to my father's altar... I flipped the pages again... letting the aroma cool my mind... I flipped it one more time... "My dear guru maharaj... please instruct me..." The abrupt stop landed me on the page entitled "Fraternal Loving Affairs"... a topic which I loved to hear about.

" 'When one of Your friends was feeling much separation from You, there were tears covering his lotus eyes, so the black drones of sleep became discouraged from entering his eyes and left that place.'... in other words, because he was too much afflicted, his eyes were full of tears, and he could not sleep. This is an example of staying up at night because of separation from Krsna."

- Srila Prabhupada; The Nectar of Devotion

As a smile began to spread across my left cheek... the book now closed... 40 minutes of sleep became frivolous again... I sank into my pillow... smirking, "How many people can say they have to get up early to help God get dressed in the morning?"