sixwordstories | (no subject)

[In the dark, yes.
When laying awake and can't sleep, yes.]

Where do you get lost?
Ummm....[didn't mean that how it kinda sounded.]
I meant...well, yeah, that.

At night. 4am knows all my secrets.
And in the streets at night. In the rain. In the woods and the mountains.

Yeah.

Four doesn't last forever though.

It can feel like it.

[Lips press together, bitten from the inside.
Nods.
Yes, yes it can feel that way. The doubts linger, guilt and questions too, all of it stretching out the time. One hour, one little hour when all of those undone, badly done, and even those things are were done come back.
Nobody really talks about it though. They just say that they couldn't sleep.]

Until the sun rises, and then it's back to the daily grind.

Never know if the sun is gonna rise though. Or how long 4am is gonna last.

[4am lasts for hours upon hours]

Feels like that sometimes, doesn't it. Either way, at the end of it all, there really isn't any choice but to find yourself.

If there's an end. 4am doesn't always end though. Not for everyone.

Having to be up at four thirty every day sort of kills that notion.

It's okay. Most people don't lose their secrets to the Night.

You're better off for it. Keep em close and safe.

When I was little, I read Anne of Green Gables. In one of the ones where she's older...Windy Poplars there was a girl who believed in other kinds of time and they were on a map. Someday. Tomorrow. Yesterday. Time for dessert. Time to come in. Time for a bath. Storytime.

I think, [slowly said, great consideration behind the thought]if I thought like that - like Elizabeth - that 4am would be a time I wouldn't put on my map. Or maybe put on the backside where I couldn't see it.

[Eyebrows questioning.] If that makes any sense.

[He looks very concerned about what she says]

Put it on the map. On the right side. That way if you ever get lost you can always find your way back.

...if it's in the back, you might get stuck where it's always 4am.

I haven a feeling we might be veering off into two different notions of the night.

But I...[mouth closes, holding in the protest, organizing it better] She didn't put any of the times she didn't like anywhere on the map, Not on the front and not on the back. I just thought that the times I didn't like could have a place where I didn't have to look at them all the time. [Lost time would be there, too late, times best forgotten, bad times...even some last times.]

[Shakes her head, this is silly. It isn't something that someone who was supposed to be grown up would do or talk about. Maybe a writer. Maybe someone who studied too much literature and thought too much. Somedays that was her.]