Midnight Lilies

I lie awake some nights, staring at the shadows on my ceiling for hours. Sometimes they move. Sometimes that scares me. Sometimes, it's a comfort, watching them bloom lilies across my black walls, stretching feathery petals in every direction. They thrum with their definition of life. I hate it when the lilies wither and all I can watch are the scenes, the suicide scenes, where the bullfrogs jump to their pond water death.

There's always airplanes at night. The house is still so you can hear them crawling over your head, thundering away to some place other than here. Some place far, far away. I don't rightly know why they crash past me and fade off into the sunrise...they always, always forget me, leaving me lying in my pity and in my soul. I hate this place.

Sometimes, a car drives past my window. It shrieks when it hits the corner and turns onto Old Orchard. I can never remember the other corner's name. I've lived her for ten years and I still don't know the name of the street. I've climbed up the post, and I've tied my little brother to it multiple times. But I don't know the name. I doubt that I ever will.

There are so many things in this world that we will never know, and I think of them as I lie awake. Each heartbeat rockets me into another reality, another dream, another lie. I'm learning to hate it, to love it, to want it, to need it. Life is living, isn't it? Do you call this living? Isn't that what you asked me, darling? Step outside of this sandbox world and take a look back. Maybe, just maybe, those midnight lilies have it right. They bloom across your field of vision, always stretching out to the dawn.