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  • Haley Moore Haskin

Nighttime


I think I hear a cayote in the backyard woods. Maybe it’s just a dog from the faraway fenced in house. Maybe it’s just a groundhog red herring rustling through the bushes. But who can be sure? I’m safe in the rails of my back porch, and the glowing windows behind it, pouring out evening kitchen light.


Inside it is a muggy hot summer’s eve. A glass of water sweats on the well-worn table. The light fixture above appears to flicker as a small beetle buzzes determinedly around its inside. Grubby Tupperware holding the remnants of dinner sits by the sink unattended. But it is Friday night. I will allow myself this naughty unrinsed pleasure as I look into this darkening summer evening.


Outside a mild breeze settles in the air. I walk to the railing and curve my waist onto the cool raw wood, casting my gaze to the valley where curious fireflies speckle the gray grass below. They turn into stars as I look up, up, up to the clear night. And somewhere, where the sky and the earth meet in the middle, the stars and the fireflies all blend together, and the sky is extra bright.


Just there on the horizon is where I see my dreams, the past, the present, the future. Good memories, daydreams, and fantasies hang there. I see them play out in both vivid detail and shadowy vagueness, in that bright possible light where the earth meets the sky. When nighttime comes every day, it is easy to have countless plans and feelings associated with its warming spell. I swim in my thoughts like a lucid dream. And when I have sunk too long into all my reminiscing and planning, reality taps my shoulders with a fresh whisper of wind.


My gaze falls to each side of the horizon, where life continues its beat. From the highway across the way cars rumble and whir. I wonder where they’re all going as I see their headlights swoop down the hill and streak through the trees. In the windows around there is flashing blue light – each living room’s a different rhythm and pattern. People are retired to their couches, relieving the troubles of the day. Next door, through the window with closed white curtains, a soft yellow light glows. From the house on the other side comes only sleepy darkness. Couples and families and loners. Old and young and middle aged. They all have stories of which they are the center. And to them, I am just the distant neighbor. The one who sits on the back porch under the canopy lights and thinks of stories.


I swear I hear that cayote now. What was that down in the grass just beside me? The bugs buzz louder in my ears, around my head. The frogs start to quicken their chirping. When the world is quiet enough to finally hear the earth, I realize… *everything around me is living.*


This is the heartbeat of the sleeping planet. Though the sun goes down, the moon always sees the still, working body of this timeless earth. It is a mystery to me. Though we all give in to our couches and beds, the midnight world outside our windows, just beyond our patio railings, is buzzing, electric – more alive than our daytime eyes are meant to see.



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