The Hours No One Sees

Time ever so gently stumbles into the dark side of the moon, where cacophonous days fade to the dark and quiet hum of night.

Where closed eyes drift and breath finds a dance partner in stillness, swaying gently to the rhythm of calm.

At least usually.

But not for me.

The Night. Viciously feared for its dark depths full of unknowns, where one is certain only that which is dangerous lingers?

That is the only place I can find peace.

While the world beneath the sun snored, I could count opportunities as easy as counting the stars in the sky. The day demanded motion, the night invites meaning. In the hush between midnight and morning, my thoughts finally remember how to speak. I, once again, meet the parts of me that hide from the sun, the imagination that is drowned out by the raucous onslaught of day.

I find camaraderie with the owls and the bats, I am not awake alone in these so-called wakeless hours, but free.

Free to find truth in starlight, myself in the silence, and inspiration in all that's around me.

The routine is the same. Lay in bed, a noble attempt at slumber, only to be thwarted by restlessness night after night. Once the restlessness coaxes me out of the covers embrace, my face is then illuminated by the cold glow of the laptop screen. The blinking cursor on the screen. It waits expectantly.

At first, it's a small pulse at the back of my head, like a murmur I can't quite hear. But slowly, gently it grows like the first quiet notes of a song, and before I know it the words flow smoothly out. Not just words, but scenes. Stories. Ideas like fragments of dreams that haven't yet faded.

I've tried writing during the day. With rays of light streaming through the window and the buzz of the living world outside. It isn't the same. It's always like trying to catch the wind in your bare hands. But the night brings just the right emptiness, one waiting to be filled with endless possibilities. With fantastical worlds of magic or lines of poetry that taste like honey and smoke. As if the world's dreams cling to me at just the right time so that they might be materialized in words.

But once the sun creeps over the horizon, and the world begins to yawn and stretch. The larks, the morning people who seem to hit the ground running at the earliest crack of light, even the rocks seem to buzz with an energy that feels like it echoes in the brain and drowns out the spark. In daylight's dominion, stillness is a sin, and the hours march with merciless intent, demanding constant momentum. Brightness fills vision with so much overwhelming information, setting expectations for what can and can't be. Progress must march on, you must always be making progress, but progress is very particularly defined.

Light brings limitations.

What is it that would be so dangerously exposed in the rays of dawn that I must continue to hide in the silence between the stars that spread across the sky like spilled glitter?

Terrified of disappointing the small expectations set by the larks, the owl clips its own wings before they can grow— crippling the freedom of flight to appease a sky that feels too low, too crowded. And so I clip my thoughts before they soar— shrinking the wonder into shapes that won't disturb.

But the spark that ignites in the night burns through every boundary. In the unseen hours, I find a hardwired connection to that wonder that now slowly approaches, afraid of being shoved back into that narrow mold. The sky above no longer crowded as the shroud of darkness seems to be truly endless. Limitless. The stars, though known logically to be impossibly far, seem only just out of reach. Like if I simply stretch on the tips of my toes, a breath away from floating, I can just about touch them. Wings grown, feral and unkempt but no less capable of flight, carry me effortlessly through horizons yet to be named. The unfolding of paths that lead to unwritten futures not halted, but merely lying in wait for the stillness to allow them to bloom unfettered. Without the demand for growth, or the cage that insists it be perfect.

The creature that is inspiration can't be summoned. There is no way to lure it from wherever in the deep recesses of the mind that it hides until it decides to make itself known. Like with a skittish stray, you must be patient and wait, earn its trust slowly to enjoy its companionship should it so choose to bestow such a blessing upon you. You can't force it. Leaving space for it to exist as it is loving, Feral… beautiful.

So I'll wait.

I'll wait for the calm of moonlit streets, when porch lights across the globe attempt to mirror the stars above. I'll wait for the sun to hide behind the horizon. For the world to, once again, drift off into that quiet hum.

I'll wait, patiently, for inspiration to cozy up to me like a loyal pet even if there's no one awake to witness it. When darkness opens my eyes to the branches of the unrealized, the wells of the unknown. Whether it brings the gentle flowers basking in the silver glow, or the claws of danger, I won't know for certain until I'm upon it.

And I'm okay with that.

And I will continue to race the clock, the sun's relentless cycle of returning, and the weight of my own eyelids as they blink slower and slower, just to allow the font of magic to flow freely through my fingertips. Hypothesizing continuously as to just when it will run out, if it ever does. If the sun's golden glare is too much for my senses then I will quietly wait and admire the moon's gentle luminescence as the words return to me once more.

Sincerely,

A Night Owl.