Nightingale

 

Hi

I’m writing this from the night. 

I never check the time, but the birds are up. Some of the birds. The darkness is not yet worn thin. It’s still thick in parts. So I’m thinking it’s maybe 4.30am and those are the extra-keen birds I am hearing.

I have written from the night before. One piece was titled “Night Garden”. This piece I have not yet named. You’ll be the first to know when I do.

There.

But I dare not look at the clock and know for certain what time it is. One of the things about the Night that I love is its slippery time. The day is so precise, let the night be loose. So I dare not look.

When I first came down it was  a case of Don’t step on the black cat in the night scenario. We have two cats and they seem to both want to be with me at every moment, especially at night. So downstairs with me they came. Like I said, I don’t know the actual time but guess about four thirty. Most of the birds have stopped talking now, except for one persistent one you reckon was probably awake all night anyway.

I have just checked the time (on the computer, for the first time this morning, and it is 5.50am. So when I was earlier speculating about the time it was probably 5.30 instead of 4.30. Quite close. But I'd rather not know the precise time.

When I came downstairs earlier in the total dark, not yet five o'clock and Daylight Saving, so dark in the morning. The cats came with me and I feared I would trip. I also managed to scare myself, which is kind of embarrassing. But coming downstairs in the total darkness with two dark cats is kind of scary. I could hear the scary music in my head. 

I went to the doctor's yesterday so I have this wound on my back for which the anaesthetic has just worn off and I can't see. Pain makes it scarier, somehow.

Somehow I get downstairs. I reach into the plate cupboard for the automatic sensor switch, switch that on. The cupboard light goes on and I can see! One cat at my foot, the other close by. It's alright for them, they don't even know it's night. I'm on high night alert, on account of the fact that I cannot SEE! The automatic sensor is on, the cats set it off now. I can see. The candle of the night!

Night is busy with itself in a way that Day isn't. Day just is, Night arrives and leaves and stays, and so on. 

You will know who this is...

I am she tonight!