The great, vast sea of silence and calm darkness settles woven through the homes and streets, leaving naught but a scattering of solitary lambent souls in its breast. How calm and serene it is. How it fills the void with a shaded life that performs its slow sweet dance, in contrast to the jubilant vibrancy that is the jaunt of the day. How it lays those weary few down to drift to another port far and away amongst specters and fantasies, but also lets an even smaller few enjoy the void that is the night. Though, as one sit or putter or lay in the stillness one ponders and mutter upon their illness. The comfort of the silent peace slowly fades and there is no peace but only the silence, and the expanse of their mind. And those solitary few in their solitary rooms with their lights overhead and perched in front of them pick and spy over every grain that the tide of days past brought them to bide their time. And when they’ve been sorted and their minds are clear of future and past there is nothing left but them and the void that is the moment. Still being still these solitary few shrug it off and continue on, creating and entertaining and working as they might. But as they craft and laugh their eyes drift with their mind, there being no sand of dream to bog their thought. Tiredness wears them thin, raw, and critical; fragments of light spread out before them down, against, and through, casting shadows in many a neighboring room. These shadows crawl upon them, echoing warped and twisted images of the soul that might be mistaken not for abominations but a reflection. Images kept away and at bay by thoughts of days past and days future, not the days that make them cringe and seek a suture. Not a soul to speak to, not for these solitary few. How they hunger, how they mew. They raise their hands to block out the light and between their hands they feel the spaces of their fingers. Emptiness, filled with only with palpable, tangible, loneliness so heavy that they sink into the moment and drown in it. How dead these few are, flickering in the night, while sister and brother and father and mother and neighbor and friend lay comfortably in the silence enjoy the day ending they wander through the night alone and misbegotten, remembering things they had wished they’d forgotten. But one cannot forget that when the day is gone and it comes to an end, there is only oneself and oneself is not always your friend.