Changing Motions

Now I understand why his father slept on the couch at sleepovers: he didn't intend to go to sleep, he fell asleep watching TV—there's a difference. One says you'd rather not be in your bed, the other simply acknowledges you are too tired to move.

When I think back, it's always with a sense of motion—skateboards and fast cars and rope swings—everything seemed to be going somewhere fast, transporting faces full of smiles, wide eyes, and dreams as fresh as the world. Memories of motion that feel cinematic; bigger and more moving than I remember. 

This seems important at 3a.m., when I wake after dozing on the couch, when darkness presides over the world—this blush, this distinction, this presumed slight to nocturnal tradition. It seems important, but it's not. It doesn't matter at all.

There is a stasis now of events and futures. I move in all the wrong ways, simply to prove that I'm still alive. There is only one possible end to all of this—the movement toward that wall has increased, spinning days like dust under tires of time. 

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