Longest

The night is filled with those young girls, whose gauzy petals are both a joy and a torment. Is it worse to think that you never had a chance with one of them, or to think that once there had been such a chance, and you blew it? It's after ten, and there is  still a good amount of solstice glow clinging to the ragged fringe of the sky, at least where the clouds fail to blot it out. This is my first day without my crutches, the end of a year of terrified hobbling and wondering what would become of my mangled foot. A muscle car growls incoherently from blocks away. A horn from another vehicle blasts in its wake. The smell of urine wafts up from the sidewalk. The old man on the bench beside me is reading Thomas Hardy. I want to talk to him about it but I am afraid his voice will sound like mine...or mine like his, which may be worse. A girl bubbles into her cell phone -how much easier poets had it before these things. If I could, I would erase all evidence of the things from my work. Huge spot lights shine tirelessly where they're doing road work or shooting a movie. By the time I have finished writing, the light in the sky is gone. The girl on the phone has spilled her guts and is still nowhere near done jabbering. Her hand flutters about like a flower in the breeze. I turn to the old man and say, "Hardy, eh?" but he doesn't look up. I notice the wires trailing from his ears. Tomorrow the stretched-out days start shriveling back into themselves again, clenching up like a leaf thrown on the coals. I keep waiting for the sound of a crash in the night, a wrenching metal tone held longer than the others. I wish I could keep the light from escaping, from leaving me completely, but what good is neverending twilight? What good would it be, if the world sounded but one eternally suspended note?