There is something almost illicit about being awake at three in the morning.

The world has not yet found you.

No calls.

No texts.

No emails marked urgent by someone whose definition of urgent is suspiciously flexible. No appointments or obligations.

Even the news is asleep or, more accurately, I am refusing to wake it. For one blessed hour, there is no trump news, no breaking news and no panel of experts explaining why I should be alarmed before sunrise.

I make coffee and carry it into the quiet. At this hour, coffee tastes different, darker, warmer and vaguely conspiratorial, as though the two of us are getting away with something.

I read. I think. Sometimes I simply sit and listen to the sounds of silence, the hum of the refrigerator, the house settling, a distant car passing through the darkness. Small sounds that disappear once the day begins shouting.

At three in the morning, no one needs anything from me. I am not late, behind or expected to respond. No meal prep. The day has not yet placed its hands on my shoulders.

Eventually, dawn begins to soften the windows. The phone will light up. The world and Agent Orange will return.

But not yet.

For now, there is coffee, a book and the rare pleasure of being completely unreachable.

That may be the closest thing adulthood offers to running away from home.