Leaves Stirring In The Darkness

There's a tree outside my window. It's silhouetted against the lights from the apartment block across the courtyard. Its leaves tremble faintly in the rain, which is finally flagging after pouring down for the better part of the evening. It's quiet, both inside my apartment and outside. The gentle tapping of raindrops against the window pane only serves to amplify the silence. I feel peaceful and cocooned.

The feeling won't last.

In a matter of hours the darkness will be bleached out by the morning sun. Voices will rise up again in the streets. Neighbours and strangers will walk past each other, oblivious to anything outside their own thoughts. I'll look outside the same window, at the same tree, and I won't even see it in the bright light of day.

My eyes will be too wide open to see, my mind too alert to notice what surrounds me. When I pass by the neighbourhood playground maybe the bench by the jungle gym will be empty. Or maybe someone will be seated on it in solitary stillness. I won't know, just as I did not know this morning or on any morning last week, last month, last year.

Another day will pass in three long strides of morning, noon and evening. I won't be older and I certainly won't be wiser.

Then sunset falls. The darkness draws a soft curtain over dusk and wakes me up from wakefulness. The seconds slow into minutes again and minutes magically dilate into hours. I can hear and I can see once more.

The rain is quickening again, and the branches outside my window sway in response. There's a barely audible roll of thunder somewhere in the far distance. It reminds me that I am in a cocoon, awake but peaceful, and I'll enjoy the feeling all the more because I know it won't last.