Night

If I wind back the clock of years and only look at the nights, a black flipbook that reveals the fuzzy, half-remembered fears of childhood and the immense virtual storehouse of the subconscious, a single night swimming in memory might look like this:

Moonlight. Grey clouds. Trees moving in wind, bending and swaying like kelp in a slow current. All is silent in my room, and the view is like watching TV with the sound turned off except for the sound of my breath. The glass in the windows is old, imperfect; the silver light throws strange shadows and blurred lines across the floor, even though the windows were just cleaned. How can something transparent hold shadows within itself?

Yet even in the between time of night, there's a tension here. In the air. Like an odorless, colorless gas it fills the house completely, right up to the attic, pressing up against the roof. I could pluck the night like a bowstring and hear it chirp, hear it sing.

It's a scent that one never forgets, a climate that I've left and will never return to. I've closed the book on those nights, but not before opening them up, examining their guts, and winnowing out the source of tension. Identifying him. Becoming aware of the shadows when he is seemingly transparent.

And transparency is all the rage. There, can you see his skeleton, his beating heart, his vulnerable belly, his pleading, innocent eyes? He's sorry you know. Ever so sorry. Sorry is soothing, sssssssssss, like the sea, lulling, repetitive, say your sorry and I'll take you back under my wing, sorry is balm and salve, sorry mends bones and bruises, sorry is sly and it lies. Sorry is snake and constricting, it whispers one thing and distracts with another, it tightens and cracks ribs, can you breathe? Can you believe? You can't? No worries. Because he's sorry.