3:15

When a soul reaches towards sleep, it touches cold and awakens. Only an inch away from rest but unable to close those heavy eyes. Ideas swim in pools of thought, whle the rambling gears ramble onwards without stopping.

The night breaths life into the looming quiet, not present in the bustling thrall of day. Days can be dull. Days can be confined to idle routines. Full of nameless faces and grey office towers. Then twilight hushes them and turns the buildings into castle keeps watching over dimly lit street corners.

But what brings the hand to caress the dark evening, is the ache to wander in the unearthly silence. To see the places now cloaked in shadow, filled with different voices and sounds.

It once brought forth the fears of restless childhood. Of being so small in a vast place, tucked under quilts whose colors had ran away. When monster played with shadows on the walls.

But as the mind and body grew, the eyes sharpened and saw that those were not monsters peering out of closets or rustling under the bed. Instead, they were everything that was familiar. Still, I am intrigued by what goes bump in the night.

Like in waking dreams, one finds pleasure and comfort in worlds unknown, and wishes to peer through frosted windows when the lights turn out. To listen to the owls, the crickets, and the nocturnal chatter of the woodland creatures.

The moon is simply a different lamp that illuminates our innermost thoughts and unspoken desires. It finds us in a silvery beam while walking down an empty dirt road or still staring at the circling fan on the ceiling.

It freezes time, moving quietly like a cool whisper. Not of a ghost or ghoul or wicked spirit, but of a voice that hides in the file cabinet stuck in our heads.

Time stops and I can smell the leftovers that have been discadred in the bin. I can hear the blast of a train whistle as it passes somewhere miles and miles away. A lone car crunches the gravel outside. And a dog barks.

The night gives a dreamer a set of mighty eagle's wings, that carry them over the sleeping towns. For many, they will disappear when the lights come on.

The night gives a cynic a time for perspective. Hope, perhaps. To see things only as they are when the roadways are empty and the monitors blank.

But the dark is not all illusion, only hidden things. If midnight is the sweet dream, than the dawn will be the dream coming to life. For where half of life is spent, there is nothing but a thrilling, and never-ending, mystery.