Michael Comte

The day's peace ebbs. Foreign streets of steel and concrete call out my name. Flood lights light up the world - this is the place where there is no darkness. I can't make out the heavens, and only beaming lights I have for stars. Stars. The lifelessness about me watches. The factories slumber, and are poised to wake up at every indiscreet step.

I tense up. I feel like every passing car is out to get me. 911, just a dial away.

But people have their own problems, I figure. But to tell the truth, everything here is out to get me. But nothing moves. No breath but the breeze. I look up. Security cameras. Galore. I swear to the heavens I mean no harm. No harm has been done. No fences have I jumped over. No signs of private property. But if only there were heavens to swear by.

A car stops in the distance.

Its headlights pointed in my direction. A security vehicle, by the looks of it. I'm so afraid that it doesn't exist to me. We lock eyes. I even walk toward it, and it leaves. Resist evil, and it will depart from you.

But I'm afraid. And all that's in my mind is the urge to get the hell out of here and find refuge in my car, under the shadow of its wings. Shadow. Maybe, I tell myself, as I listen to the soft breeze of untouched Creation's first footsteps, from long ago, and as I stand still, entranced by purple skies, azure huts, and orange lights spilling all around me more beautiful than the setting sun, that I'm a coward.

But I'll grow weary of my delusions, when dawn comes again and purges this place of its empty secrets. Indeed, it will come again, and I will have disappeared, and the beaming lights will have extinguished along with me.