This One Goes Out to All the Insomniacs
by Susan L. Lin
he Human Animal dreams in third person. In these dreams, she can be anyone, anything. Sometimes she sees the back of her head just as it looks in the waking world: long glossy black hair parting to reveal bald spots scattered across her scalp. Sometimes she sees the back of her head the way it might look if she were another human animal with thick red curls she could comb her fingers through without losing a single strand. Other times she sees the back of her head as it swivels 180 degrees until she comes face-to-face with her other animal selves: an octopus self, arms skimming the ocean floor; a frog self, beady eyes rising out of pond water; a squirrel monkey self, scampering across a tree branch; a red-tailed hawk, wings taking flight with the wind. Sometimes she’s startled to realize she has no face at all.
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Author's Note
I wrote "This One Goes Out to All the Insomniacs" in fall 2023, one in a series of poems meant to explore my complex thoughts/emotions about chronic illness, mortality, and the sublime experience of navigating life in an aging human body while sharing space on Earth with all the other species who call this planet home. I have struggled with insomnia since childhood, but when I did manage to fall asleep, I experienced remarkably vivid dreams in which I sometimes slipped outside of my own skin and/or took the form of other living beings. This particular piece is a tribute to those surreal visions.
Susan L. Lin is a Taiwanese American storyteller who hails from southeast Texas and holds an MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts. Her novella GOODBYE TO THE OCEAN won the 2022 Etchings Press novella prize, and her literary/visual art has appeared in nearly a hundred publications. She loves to dance. Find more at https://susanllin.com.
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Published July 2026