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There are sirens,
somewhere. Far away from here. Closer,
the dim callings of the trains as the rails hum and sigh into darkness.
Closer still, the sound of the highway people, bleary-eyed, north
to south, south to north, all lost somewhere between painted lines.
All heading home, or leaving home, or without a home.
These are the sounds of a city that dreams as it's raining
outside in the night. What were you
dreaming about? She asks me, concern in her voice sounding alien after this
gulf of years that we've spent growing apart together. It must have been pretty bad, she yawns, stretching
her arms toward the ceiling, palms upward. She
counts something, then, on her hands, using her thumb for the first
digit, and I realize that she's doing so in binary.
Whatever it is, it's lost, and she continues. You
destroyed something, she says. There was a ghost,
I tell her, and though there's no such thing, I shiver.
No, not anymore,
she replies, and she seems sad and resigned as she rolls over and faces
the wall. She begins
writing something with her finger on the paint in the dark, and I leave
the bed so that I can look out of the window. |
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