Bleached

I like the city by night.

Streetlights glowing like furious and absolute diamonds. Branches breaking the flowing wind just as waves do inside the ocean. Dark roads where the air itself seems blackened. Tired people in an astray strolling that seems to go nowhere at all. There’s a thirst in their half-closed eyes, one for peace, for breathing time. In the buses or the subway, nothing more than solitary travelers silently contemplating the windows. Some of them sleeping. I always come to wonder just how many reasons to wake up does each one of them have. Sometimes I try to ask that about myself, but it wears me out, that’s why I stop. I like to believe that, at least.

Of course, my nighttime antics have the family quite concerned. Always ranting about danger, and kidnapping, and whatnot. It’s like they don’t realize that’s exactly what makes me elope. Outside I can’t hear their voices, I can feel the weariness come off my shoulders. I understand birds, their lightness can’t possibly be greater than the one I get walking down an unlit avenue. And I feel good then, because the world’s so heavy. Pounding you down is it’s obligation, it’s prerogative. But by midnight everything shines anew. Or should I say it doesn’t shine. It’s washed away, leaving you flying through the air. Floating ever so gently.

When you squint your eyes you get a blurry picture. But most people don’t like uncertainty, that’s why they keep them wide open. Grounded in reality. Nightwalking is like being grounded in fantasy. All problems seem like weak smoke clouds, fainting into the black holes of the sewers. The dark brings a brand new world alive. A mild world. One where even pain comes lightly, as if taking a walk down the park. The concerns, the worries, they’re all swallowed by the high tide, drowned in the endless starred firmament. Yet they strand back here again when the day comes, with its loud noises and screeching colors. The beauty of subtlety is lost within beams of sunlight.

People say I’m in danger. They say the world is unsafe. And they’re right. Their world is terribly unsafe. That’s why I made my own one out of bus rides under the moon. There, I’m untouchable, peaceful. No sound but the quiet humming of jaded troubles being locked away in the back of my head.

Yes, there are men in the alleyways. Yes, this might not last long. But even when the gunshots, or the stab wounds come, I’ll lay happy on my blood’s pool knowing I died in my own terms. Inside my own chambers. Sure of having chosen my path. I’ll let my veins run dry, slowly taking away my vision, my hearing, my breathing…

I’ll embrace the blurry shot that’s presented to my eyes, and walk toward it gleefully. I will walk in the night forever. Quiet. Numb. Free.

Within bleared, bleached worlds.