Night Walking

Walked to Denny’s with Tyler and Jared tonight.

Flip flops on side walks. Street lights and humming telephone pole wires.

Three stars. One, two, haze.

Sprinkler stains on dilapidated fences. White and grey.

Cars race by--screaming, screeching. Loud.

The city is loud. Loud in my ears.

I brace myself against the abrasions.

Sounds cut like a hacksaw.

I feel alien. I feel alone. I know where I belong, yet

I fight against that urge. Fight against myself and what

I know is truth.

Why must it be about me?

Why can’t I be happy leading the normal life?

Why am I so selfish in my desires?

I sketch pictures of granite walls and blue-backdropped trees in my mind. A quite, contemplative scene where I can retreat and recall. There is peace in the quiet of my mind, the solitude of my recollection. In reflections. In memory. In sounds only I can hear.

A pack on my back. Boots on my feet. A ringed fire with the smell of burning pine. Dirt under my fingernails. Melted snow cascades and finds its way into my water bottle--sweeter than honey. The static lightning that flashes as I slide into my sleeping bag. Home.

But I’m not home, leastways not in the deepest sense of my meaning of “home.”

There must be others like me. But I hope not.