some nights
Some nights it feels like I live in a hotel.
The cool night breeze,
the palm trees,
the late-night murmurs of people inexplicably awake for the hour.
Crickets.
The dull, faraway rush of cars on the highway that almost sounds like the ocean,
if you don't listen too hard.
Some nights I lean out my bathroom window
(almost too far, but not quite)
and feel the night air on my damp face.
The lights that line the doors of the apartment complex beside mine.
Leftover fireworks from A Holiday or Celebration.
Stomach cramps.
Some nights I forget that my body is all I have.
I cry too hard and make myself sick, not always in that order.
There's a certain strangeness in feeling like I'm close to the ocean
that makes something move beneath my ribs.
Like a prisoner with a tin cup
clank-clank-clank-ing with each bone.
Some nights it feels like the dark is too light.
The midnight gray of the city sky polluted,
the reading lamp in my neighbour's window,
the lights that line the doors of the apartment complex beside mine.
Streetlamps.
And never any stars.
Some nights I stand by my bathroom window at night with my face in the night air and the lights all off,
and sometimes,
just sometimes,
I swear I can hear the ocean.
GZ