Only For a Moment and the Feeling's Gone

The urban soundscape is deafening. Maybe it is louder than usual, or maybe I am hyper-aware, sitting on the bottom step of Steve's front porch, shivering in my pajamas. Maybe the nighttime, free from mundane anxiety, preys on my sensitivities. I should have brought a jacket, but part of me resists going back into the house, a place that I have quickly come to find so comforting. I like feeling a little bit cold. A bus drives over the bridge in the distance, its windows rattling. The subway churns underneath the ground, far off ... I can't tell. A man walks by without looking at me; I make no effort either to hide myself or to extend a greeting. An owl coos softly in the eaves above me. Two people laugh as they walk home, from a party or a gathering. I look at the moon and I wonder what it would be like to be standing on the moon, looking back at me. At the small little bit of relative space that I occupy. At my flowered PJ pants and my white tee shirt. Have you ever wondered what you look like to other people, or what your voice sounds like when it's not bouncing around in your head?

I think to myself, absently, that I would like to plant a garden. The idea of being responsible for something to grow, of being a cultivator and nurturer is organic to me. I would like to get my hands dirty, potting buds and pulling weeds and laboring over something tangible, something that I can see and smell and measure.

I like the way the cold wood feels through my pajama bottoms - I feel grounded. The night is deceivingly lonely, but it also makes you feel like the only person in the world; you fill up the entire space and have no room for emptiness. I feel much more lonely on a crowded street, or in a lecture hall full of people I've never met. I wish sometimes that I could sleep outside. I like to count the stars. I crave fresh air, hate stagnancy. I like feeling grass and earth underneath me.

I should be sleeping. But I've been sleeping so much lately that I've become bored with it, my mind declaring war on sleep even though my body is so weak that I can barely keep my eyes open. I have so much ahead of me right now, decisions and bills and moving and cleaning and starting work (the usual), but all I can think about tonight is the moon, and the stars (all that childhood wonder stuff) ... and wonder how I got to be here, how I got to be on this porch. How I got to be the person I am now, that feels at once entirely capable and woefully inadequate. How I need something that I am unable to define, but I am certain is lacking.

Another bus goes by. How late do they run here? It doesn't matter, really. I wonder if the person who walked by me is happy - if he is leaving his girlfriend's house, or going for a late night walk, trying to clear his head like the rest of us. Everyone is like that sometimes, I think. It's just something that we don't talk about. The part of us that sits on porches, crying, looking at the sky and feeling so big and so small. I think to myself that I should have said hello. But the moment is past and I will tuck myself safely back into Steve’s arms and try to sleep.