Reflections

I lean out the window and relish in the special quiet reserved for the time between so late and so early. The shadows have stretched to cover the whole world and the same street I observe everyday becomes esoteric and odd. This is borrowed time I take from R.E.M cycles and I pay for it the next day. Tiredness drags down my eyes on the days after I create time out of nothing. These wakeful hours drag on quite pleasantly though, they bring me a reward. 

"I don't suppose you've discovered anything behind your yellow wallpaper yet?" My old friend greets from her window. 

Small flecks of old paint release from the place she fidgets her hands against the sill. Her question is rhetorical of course, but a reference crafted to spear the heart of a bubbling insanity she feels. I feel it too. 

"My walls are grey." I reply. 

"Ah, that's worse. Nothing to rant and rave about." 

She had a tradition during these talks to identify the truth of complex feelings and make them seem so simple. It felt belittling and validating all at the same time. She casually brings to light the searing discontent that pinches my stomach.

"No. Grey walls are nothing to rave about. They suffocate the ranting right out of me I think". 

I feel dramatic saying this and I like it. I would feel ridiculous if I wasn't sure that she felt the same. We both tend to choke on the mundane that creeps in so often.

This liminal time of the early morning soothes me, an easy conversation at a time of day that doesn't exist feels like an escape enough. A repose from the restlessness that eats away at me in tiny ways. 

I admire the woman in the window during a lull in the conversation. She is the way I sometimes see myself, stale hair falling loose from a casual updo, all shrewd eyes and expressive brows. A small mouth, permanently wry. Commonplace tiredness etched in slightly sunken eyes. In the old, worn, window in front of me she looks like she could tell me something important. She could give away a secret, but she probably won't, so I don't ask.

"You are home so much more recently, are you working on something?" She prompts. 

"I don't feel like doing much at all lately" I conceded the boring truth.

She was visibly disappointed in my response. Understandable, I had given her nothing. 

"I am thinking of taking a trip. A long one." She says abruptly.

Radiating with a nervous energy that I recognize, she paints a picture of her dream adventure. She details how the sweet, new air will fill her lungs. She breathes deeply in the crisp night air as if she tastes it already. For a second, so do I.

"Don't you want that too, to see those things for yourself?" She interupped her own prose, just at the description of windswept grass skirting proud, imposing mountains.

She already knows the true answer. She is unbridled id but she is not oblivious.

"You know I can't just leave my life. You know. Sometimes I think you are cruel for your wanderlust." I reply, sick of that cliche internal struggle. I had conceded years ago that success and comfort had a cost.

"Did you fix that hole in your shoe?' I ask. I am trying to change the subject.

She had worn a hole right through the sole of her cheap ballet flats the other day. A byproduct of long walks taken in her life outside the window.

"No. I think it's starting to grow on me. I like the idea of having used something up so completely. I'll mount it on my wall as a trophy to all the miles I have conquered!" 

She says this like it is an exceedingly romantic thing to do. I see the hole as an inconvenient absence, a small uncomfortable problem. She sees it as core character trait. I envy her ability to create worlds through nothing but a lack of rubber where it should be. I roll my eyes though, because it means nothing. She isn't a character from a Kerouac book, she is just a woman living on an average street in a mundane suburb. She is just like me. I look at her manic eyes and know something she refuses to accept. Reality.

She leans forward, animated against the still night. She continues to weave silly rhymes about that holy shoe, a nocturnal Dr. Seuss. An inner child unleashed. It is ridiculous but I smile, she is the creative flair I wish I had the talent to exhibit. Her eyes pick up the limited light to gleam slightly, in a way I think mine can't. 

The thought brings me out of my head. She is me. She is my wanderlust and creativity. The creativity that breaks through the monotony every so often to keep me awake. The insomnia that knocks at 4.a.m. with useless ideas. I swallow her words and ideas like autosarcophagy. They scrap at my throat but I know i must burying them in my gut. I was taught a long time ago that they are no use to me in this life, outside of these dark hours.

The hours she keeps makes it difficult to exist in the regular daytime world. Perhaps if I refused to indulge in those quiet night shadowing chats, I would be better. Those grey walls would loosen their claustrophobic presence. I pull the stiff curtain, partially obscuring my reflection through the shadowed glass. It seemed a risk now though, to deny myself the stolen hours by the window. We all have our guilty pleasures to placate.

She lives behind grey walls and waits for the quiet hours to speak. My old friend, silenced by the monotony and practicality.

Surrounded by the substanceless grey, she is the bright, crazed, yellow. A part of me that warms my soul, but hurts my eyes.

I leave her, my reflection, to her restless energy. I have work tomorrow.