Didn’t want to stay in the apartment anymore. Went for a drive in the rain-soaked night through the rain-soaked town and headed east.

Drove through a dark spot of town, the in-between, those far back roads with sparse street lamps.

The rain was that drizzle that bordered somewhere between a good rain and a mist, the water coming down fast, thick, but small drops, coating the windshield.

Irregular cars passed, headlights aglow, washing my car in yellow light that lit up the water drops like individual insect eyes and the glass became too cluttered to see, thick with mirrored surfaces turning every which way, winking in and out, shining bright for a moment like a backlit fractal

before the car passed and the darkness surrounded and the view was crisp, clear again. The lines of the road whispering past in the glaze of my own lights, the edges of the road in focus, as if not a drop of water washed across the glass.

An ambulance flickers red and blue oncoming, throwing blind light to the glass again, a frozen moment, the water running, thick, first red, then blue, white, my wipers slash at the water, the canvas clean, sharp detail. The lights don’t strike the glass, they don’t lay flat, outspread, shielding, in that moment I see the boxy vehicle, I hear its scream through the drumroll on the roof, I see the reflective tape catch my lights like a flashbulb on an iris,

And then in the same moment that the ambulance is past, the rain creeps thick again, crawling across, murky, until the light fades and the darkness settles.

In my mirror the lights still flickered. No wipers for the side window. No wipers for the back. The lights trail away in a warbling obscurity. I focus on the road ahead. I stay straight. There is no oncoming traffic save a motorcycle, single headlight, in the far distance, barely a speck enough to catch a bead. But I can’t stop checking my mirrors, even after the wails have long passed.

*

Back home, my bedroom window cracked, the rain still coming down, the air in my room chilled, the sounds from outside pouring inside. The sounds of cars along the road, splashing rainwater and growling past.

Sitting in peace,

trying.

But the cars keep driving past, one overlapping another, the spray from the tires hissing from the distance before moving next to the window and then pressing onward and in that onward movement into the distance another comes, either following or passing, passing, following, passing, overlapping hissing and hissing, a final breath rattling through a throat, sighs from the road, long, heaving, longing.

They don’t stop. A breath in through the nose, unheard, pressed out, trailing into the distance long after it should have ended, long after it should be gone.

The sounds press against the glass even when I close the window, an army of the demonic pressing and sighing and wheezing on the other side of the thick hanging drapes. Shut it out, shut it out. The persistence of memory (a melting clock).

For a moment the cars stop, a lag in the traffic. It’s passing midnight on a Friday night now. This will not be the last, the streets don’t quiet on a Friday until deeper into the morning (I know, I’ve stayed up, sleepless, listening). One of my neighbors on the other side of the connecting wall blasts music, but all I can hear is a sometimes-rhythmic throbbing along the wall.

The heartbeat of the Stranger?

Maybe.

But enough of this. Time to blog, time to write, time to show my mind for others, to press on the brakes, to turn on the headlights and have you flicker back, to ignite the raindrops in the night.

For now.