Sitting Outside on a Cool Night

Around the husk of light that forms from blinded windows,

over ruffling bed-sheets, soaked in sweat, and living spaces

decant with glowing lampshades and warm rugs and paintings,

I sit in the cool, dry air, shrouded in the safety of the night.

Bronze streetlamps form constellations with the glow of

dormitory windows. Somewhere near, bass booms from

another townhouse, and the computer geeks and drug freaks

all stare at dazzling screens of color, intoxicating voices whisper

in dim study-sessions and a boxer pounds a red, white and blue

punching bag in a vacant gym. I stare down at pure white cement,

and listen to the whisking of cars and air, run my fingers across on

another. I am missing something: a guitar, a pen and paper, a canvas,

or maybe just a cigar. I could let every single flak of ask be another

blues song, performing for all those closed windows. Behind one,

a folk singer plays, letting the vibrations of his strings, feed the

thin, yellow husk that flows out from the glass and into my bottom eyelid.

— Alex Hawkins