Eat Mangos

It is twelve twenty-eight. I strike a match.

In the quiet I go running through the cool night. The sun sets late out here and it takes a while for the heat to evaporate, rising up through the brown and the upstairs bedrooms. I find myself circling around and around the route through the townhouses, clockwise like an old carousel horse, losing myself to the path I’ve followed for the past five years. I catch my breath on the wandering smoke of my neighbor’s cigarette as she waves at me on her way to her front door through the darkness. It tastes strangely sweet. She tosses it into the dirt on the side of the path.

There is no reason for me to be out here, except I have trouble sleeping and I need to breathe. I hate days when there is no moon. I am terrified of darkness, of loneliness, of something I can’t put my finger on but dream about whenever I’m at home, quiet disasters, little terrors that make no sense to anyone but my own tired mind. I wake up at cold hours, suddenly aware that I lonely, feeling like an image is slipping away, like a part of me quietly knows that I am at a point in my life where I have everything I will ever need, and that someday, soon, I will lose it all, piece by piece by piece, like puzzle that needs to be put away.

So I run my mind like a racehorse, until it is clear and I can think, and then I sit on the stair, watching the windows dim and the street slow. Out of a second-story apartment across the street appears a man with a fauxhawk and a white wifebeater, followed by a small reddish-brown dog with pointed ears. I can’t make out the man’s features; all I can see is the bright orange embers of the tip of his cigarette, and his silhouette against the staircase. He walks slowly up and down the street, the dog, leashless, trotting at his side. Then he stops, looking up at the sky, and exhales. Something about him goes so still it makes my heartbeat slow. In the window way above, an invisible hand lights a candle. He becomes a picture I can frame. 

Sometimes I wish I smoked, just to have something warm in my hands, just to have an excuse to light another match into the solitude of my own front porch. I also wish I wasn’t allergic to dogs. Not sure about that fauxhawk though, it might throw my style all out of whack.

I write by candlelight, between sips of tea, my fingertips lightly coated in sulfur and potassium chlorate, from a room that smells like vanilla coffee and blueberries. The sprinklers outside are making a rhythm like rain on warm pavement. I like watching the lights being extinguished in windows as I pass beneath them. I want to know, are you afraid of the dark, like I am?