The Life in the Night
I draw the curtains to the side and split the blinds with two trembling fingers, but it’s too dark. There’s no hope of seeing anything. I don’t need to see anything. I don’t need proof to know that it’s hopeless. He won’t be there. Maybe he never will be there again. Maybe...-The blinds snap back into place and I draw the curtains back to cover them. It’s almost two in the morning. The muffled sound of snoring echoes throughout the entire second floor of my house and the only light that’s on is the dim lamp in the corner of my room. How can everyone be so at peace yet I’m so restless I can’t even think of sitting still? I walk to the mirror and feel pathetic. My tired eyes droop and my arms dangle with no support of my shoulders like a rag doll. I wonder what somebody would say if they walked into my room and saw me like this. Would they play along and act like everything was just dandy? Would think nothing of it or would they worry about me? That won’t happen though, because they are all asleep and dreaming their wonderfully dreamy dreams. Who knows if I’ll ever have another dream? Only time will tell, but I wish time would move a little faster.

After minutes of pacing the length of my room, my legs start to whine. I retreat to my bed where I can only sit for a second and a half before turning off the light going back to the window. I push the curtains aside and yank the string that pulls up the blinds and within moments, my fingers manage to pop out the screen and I carry it silently to my closet. It’s such repeated routine now, I could do this in my sleep. Moonlight illuminates my room as my eyes adjust and the warm summer night’s cool breeze strokes my hair, telling me that it’ll somehow be alright, not to worry, everything happens for a reason or some other lie along those lines. Isn’t that how it generally works?
Before I know it, my elbows are leaning against the cool windowsill with one arm dangling out into the dark holding a stick of lung cancer waiting to happen. I’m concentrated on the dead black night. There’s no motion, not even a leaf tumbling across the street in the light breeze. What happened to the nights that I used to be in love with? The nights when I would see him, the whole world was so full of life and love and lust and adrenaline. Just months ago the moon was a spotlight that went wherever I did. That tree just two feet away from my window would be the only that that made me question whether or not I should go, but the stars would urge me on with a force so strong nothing would have been able to hold me back.
I exhale slowly, watching the smoke swirl into the air, teasing me with its freedom. My thumb flicks the ashes off of the cigarette and they fall onto the coarse black shingles that lay just a foot below me. Moss grows carelessly on them and acts like glue for my ashes. There must be two summers worth of little white snowflakes that never melt, stacking up on the green sticky goo. When they float away, I wish I could follow them wherever they’re going. What could have happened? It’s all so lifeless now; it’s all so dead and dark.
When I look down, I can imagine a girl creeping through the driveway, weaving in and out of cars, thinking she’s so sneaky. Her hair is perfectly straightened, flowing like a waterfall down her shoulders. Her make-up is done up nicely, as if she just fixed it a minute ago. The steps she takes out of the yard are so silent and rehearsed, nobody would have noticed her. She looks up at the windows on the second floor to make sure all the lights are off. When she sees that they are, she smiles. I remember what it feels like to smile like that. And it wasn’t long ago I did. I think it’s safe to say that it was the best feeling in the world. Her earrings shine briefly in the moonlight along with her star filled eyes. The girl starts to run. I can hear her bare feet slapping against the pavement. A giggle escapes from my lips with the memories of stones jabbing into the bottoms of feet but I would never notice because there wasn’t any room in my mind for pain.
Another drag calms me down as my lungs are filled with smoke and nicotine. I hold my breath to keep it there for a couple seconds. Thoughts of all the lectures I’ve received from my mother about how smoking kills flood my mind for a split second until I look back out into the night and focus on the girl running like an idiot down the middle of the road in those big baggy black sweatpants and some dark t-shirt her boyfriend let her borrow. Exhale.
She ducks behind a pine tree thinking she’s out of sight. I close my eyes and try as hard as I can to remember that feeling. Watching and waiting for what I know is so immoral but there’s something inside of me telling me that it doesn’t matter what’s right and wrong. This is the feeling that tells me I have to do something if I know I’ll regret not doing it later. It’s the feeling I want to hold on to and never let go. When I open my eyes, there are headlights coming down the road, bobbing up and down with the potholes and bumps.
I blink just once and everything is gone. The girl, the car, the life in the night, everything gone. The night is still again and nothing continues to move. The moonlight doesn’t seem as bright. It’s like the stars are all dimmed. I’m not hiding in the tree; I’m only in one place; the present. Standing at the window with my hair perfectly straightened and my make-up all done.
Just one more hit, I tell myself. Just one more hit then I’ll be done for the night.
A pack and a half later I turn on the fan and spray down the room with some cheap lavender perfume I got from a trip to the mall I wasn’t supposed to be on. I kiss the velvet rose I’m not supposed to have and smell the dried petals from the flowers he wasn’t supposed to give me. I lay down on my bed with no motivation to get under the covers and try not to think, but the silence only makes my thoughts louder and a swarm of “what if’s” and “maybes” flood my mind. Maybe I’ll get some sleep tonight. Maybe someday he will come back. Maybe I need to let go. Maybe that will never happen. What if it never does? No. I’m sure it won’t.