{ late night light: november 17, 2013, 1:11am }

it's unseasonably warm this new morning. the wind careens like a column of birds, migrating to a higher place, driven ever upward toward a promised, unknown home.

but only for a time.
eventually everything returns.

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milky lavender clouds skim swiftly across the moon, spurred on by the wind. i stand beneath the racing sky and feel the rapid passing of time and cells through my own body. i feel it acutely. we're all a roiling composure of days, disappointments, visions of a precious future. i want to stop the elements of this world from running through me at such a rate, but i know i can't. there's nothing to do but hold the thread of my life with both hands and be pulled, moved, flung ever upward toward a promised, unknown home.

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i hear a lone canadian goose calling out in the wind. oh, maybe there are two. their cries sound like triumphant, unbelievable conversation. this night is amazing, says one. i know, isn't it! answers the other. let's go higher! come on, higher! they spur each other on. we get to be here now, doing this. we get to go. we get to beat our wings. we get to fly. let's go! higher, higher, higher! it is a chorus of marvels. it is something i could listen to all night.

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this new morning i feel something ancient singing a melody through my marrow. it's almost imperceptible. it's the single thread of my existence, sounding a meandering cadenza of this day, of this night, of the day's midnight, of the eighty-eight minutes since. i haven't heard the voice of my soul singing in awhile. she mourns my recent loss and celebrates the recovery since. in her timbre i can hear that one day i will be able to let this go; a hint of effervescence spins through the intervals. she believes, and i believe. i close my eyes. the wind. the birds. the thing ripped away, the home in the clouds. the promises, so many promises, the moon on your teeth on the best night of our lives. the threads in my body, the cellular shiver of triumph, the marrow of midnight, the thunderous call for the soul to be flung high, high, higher.