I’ve been working on this for years; off and on, not daily. The thought balloon doesn’t read smoothly. Not yet. Eventually it will. Probably. Grammar and I have an uneasy relationship, especially when I’m twisting words around to suit a punchline. I want the words to sound natural, to read easily. Right now the thought balloon hurts my brain like a hard pea pressed into my back.
UPDATE: a rewrite on the monk’s thought balloon:
“How can I sleep?
“It feels like I’m on top of theory that will forever change our understanding of heredity.”
Mark Heath cartoons 
Every time I scroll through my posts and come across this one, I tense. It irritates me. I thought posting it might inspire me to fix it. So far it’s inspiring me to delete it.
Maybe if I removed the ellipsis. Changed it to “How can I sleep?” A stronger sentence to counter-balance the preposition-heavy sentence that follows.
“How can I sleep?
“It feels like I’m on top of theory that will forever change our understanding of heredity.”
Hmm. I sort of like that. I’ll move the revised thought balloon up top and see how I feel when I come by tomorrow.