I can stand in the doorway sighing, watching the trees whisper and rush, counting the stars on one hand. I can shove my hands as deep as possible into the faux-silk lining of this worn coat and frown into the night, like I'm trying to recall something once important. I can relish the dark, covet the quiet, mute my phone and let the solitude settle around me, because sometimes
sometimes I don't want to exist
sometimes I feel so much older than I am
sometimes I am tired but sleep won't help
sometimes I like to be alone.
I don't have to try, in the dark, in the quiet. I don't have to be me. I have to breathe. I have to let my heart go on beating. But I can be anywhere, in the dark, in the silence. I can be in the places I have been with the people I used to know. I can be in places I haven't seen yet but I imagine I know. I can relive the days both good and bad and choose what I might change. I can be anyone, anywhere, any time, when I sit alone in the black blanketed silence and breathe and think and feel.
But when the lights come back on, I am me again, and I am not quite alone again, and my worries, my fears, the tick tick ticking of my time here on earth--they creep back in like familiar leering friends, tapping and pulling and nudging me softly in the bright.
