A great many

IT FELT LIKE MORNING, lying on the rooftop with eyes closed. The moisture had worked its way to every hair and made damp jeans adhere to my legs. I looked up, and can recall the feeling of cold, and warmth.

It was warm in Seattle. I stole away to a phone booth at the train station, pulled out a calling card and punched in the sequence. I’d seen plenty here, or so I’d thought, and it was time to go home.

Holding a glass of champagne, I gazed past the television. The creaks of a wooden floor sounded in time with a dozen pairs of stumbling feet, and I should have been elsewhere.

I dusted the chalk off my shorts, and picked myself up from the sidewalk where we sat under the sun. Not far away a lawn mower buzzed, drowning out the silent conversation.

The bench was encompassed by serenity. Wrapped in a sleeping bag under an August night, the world deviated to a perfect quiet.

Mosquitos chipped at my legs, the bumps exposed by a rising sun. It was a faint climb up the hillside, barefeet on slippery grass going back to where I came from.

An audience leaked from a great many doors. We trickled forward in search of a setting to untwine, and shortly after stood at a place I never found again.

I took the train home.