VERY FAR AWAY, Leora once read somewhere, there are two countries, thousands of miles apart, where all of the inhabitants have forgotten how to sleep.

In daylight, they forget their sleeplessness. They do not notice the slight dullness in each other’s gazes, the miscounting of transactions, the dreamless fingertips of lazy lovers too tired to explore each other’s skin. But as soon as night falls—when the stars lower themselves down on tiny invisible strings until they are suspended just above the highest trees—the people in the two countries begin to wail.

The opening cry sails up from one of the countries and then travels thousands of miles, over mountains and valleys and cities and across the ocean, until it reaches the still, twilight air of the other country, where night is falling. As darkness drifts down, the air begins to vibrate, drumming into the spaces between houses and doorposts and ears. The sky moans. When the people in the second country hear it, they remember their sleeplessness and they too begin wailing, a wail that flies through the air in a fury, like feathers beaten out of unused pillows. They wail all night, children and adults together, old people and young people and babies in a chorus, wailing for the other country to stop wailing, wailing for their own lost sleep. But when the first deadened light of day begins to peek through the darkness, they lower their voices, rub their tired eyes, and return to their ever-waking lives.

Leora remembered this story on one of her own long and dreamless nights—dreamless nights that had started not long after she started seeing Jake, and only a few hours after she realized that she loved him. Not that she had told him. Even now, several sleepless weeks later, she still hadn’t told him. But she had thought about telling him each night as she climbed into bed, and as a result she had forgotten how to sleep.

It was torture, not being able to sleep. And what was even more disturbing was the realization of how easy it is to forget how to sleep. Sleeping isn’t natural, she thought. Babies have to learn how to sleep through the night, mastering it only after many months of agony. During her nights of sleeplessness, Leora had discovered that sleep is a delicate gift, so delicate that even the slightest thought before bed can knock it out of place, shattering it on the floor below the twisted sheets. Leora would lie in bed, thinking of Jake, and soon thoughts would begin piling on top of each other, one after another, her mind grinding and groaning like the cogs of some unstoppable machine.