Audio Version of "Sleepwalking Towards Bethlehem"

Listen to AI read the first paragraph of my “Sleepwalking Towards Bethlehem", forthcoming in The Missouri Review.

Two years ago, my fiancée told me that I’d been sleep- walking and carrying on full-fledged conversations with her each night. When Kelly first relayed this, her brow twitched slightly with what I took to be suppressed irritation. These mornings, I never remembered anything about whatever it was I’d done overnight. After all, somnambulism is a classic example of automatic behavior. Yet, the archetypal image of the sleepwalker—nightcap with drooping tassel, eyes closed, arms outstretched in front, wrists bent down—is wrong. Sleepwalkers engage in complex behavior: they might cook a meal, drive a car, carry on a conversation, murder a relative—all without the accompaniment of consciousness. It raises the question: if I’m not conscious, how am I seemingly able to adapt to changing circumstances? Who was talking when I was conversing? As Kelly and I sat up in bed that first morning, her pent-up prickliness made me acutely aware of the score between us. What was the regrettable con- duct I unfreely enacted each night, but for which I must nevertheless accept responsibility? Evidently, I had been peeing in the closet.