Some Nights

Some nights, we find freedom in strange places.

At a strange house with strange people that we don't really mesh with. In a strange backyard

at a strange time of night with a dying fire and stale chips and spiked drinks.

Or maybe we feel free because of all that.

Because after a few hours and a few cups, strange people and strange places don't seem so strange anymore. And all that we would find hedonistic and despicable and uninteresting suddenly feels like art of a dark and mysterious form.

And then we're nothing but characters in a pencil-sketch, controlled by an artist.

And we're suddenly okay with that.

And even though we're walking around in a gritty, colorless world that has been smeared by the side of someone's hand, we feel like it's home.

Like there's no other place that could possibly be more comfortable than this odd, nondescript setting, where literature is more clear, and people are more beautiful, and a dying flame looks like a forest fire, and crass music starts to resonate with us when it would never have before.

And then you're more interesting, and I'm more interesting, and you're not really a stranger anymore because when the world is less strange, you're more transparent too. And I like the feeling of a not-really-stranger's hand in mine, though meaningless it may be.

But somehow, I don't want to believe that it was. Even though you'll wake up the next day, shaking off that pencil-sketch world like an artist shakes off a bad day of painting, and I'll wake up and rinse the embers off my fiery skin. And even though we'll go back to walking on either side of those railroad tracks,

somehow I'm still going to be left hoping that they're not perfectly parallel.