coffee at 3am and what it means

This is a bad habit I have apparently kept since I was twenty-two: some nights, for no clear reason, I make coffee at three in the morning. Not because I want to stay up, not because I can't sleep, not because there's anything to do at three in the morning that requires coffee. Just — the night is quiet, and the act of making coffee is the right kind of small. The hiss of the stove, the smell filling the kitchen before the coffee itself is ready. I take it to the balcony. The street is not empty at three but it's a different street. The sounds are different: a truck somewhere distant, a dog, the particular silence that isn't really silence. I sit and drink coffee and watch the city not sleep. I've been doing this long enough to know it's its own thing — not insomnia, not productivity, not melancholy. Just being awake at the wrong time, which is sometimes the right time.