Tuesday, August 3, 2010

The Night Can be a Freight Train

So I'm laying in bed and the nightime is mostly still, except for the cable box grindind away information onto some internal drive. Its just mashing and grinding the digital unknown like corn for masa. My brain wants quiet, but the innards of this box just keep grinding and grinding throughout the night. In the distance, a northbound freight train bellows its horn across western Chula Vista and I wonder why the conductor feels the need to wail out across the calm at 2:30 a.m. Does he feel the need to be heard, too? Maybe he is trying to warn the world about something that can only be told through the train's horn. Maybe his message is only meant for those of us laying awake as this mass of steel and cargo crosses H Street. Maybe the conductor is a woman and I have no possible way to translate her moonlit howl. At this time of night, the only thing that matters is that I'm awake again and the towel across my pillow and my shirt are so drenched in sweat that the fabric sticks to my body, and I can feel my neck become tacky to the touch as the skin cools and the sweat dries.

But my mind doesn't quite race, rather it lumbers at first, and gains momentum slowly, pondering not much of anything, but worried that I will wake Denise or the kids. I am ashamed that I cannot control this. Ashamed about how this hurts my family and everyone around me. Ashamed that I can't do anything right sometimes because my thoughts are scattered across my mind like embers and ash in the wind of an October wildfire, lighting the night orange and covering the day with delicate ash, soon to be trampled upon with the footsteps of the uninvited, eventually swept away, dropped into kitchen trashbags, and quietly dismissed.

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