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SMALL TOWN ROAD ONE NIGHT
A child's laughter hurtles through the dark like a puppy with a stolen bone. I am quite alone. The sulky stare of a street lamp, stubbornly hugging the grassy edge of this narrow small town road slithering ahead of me; this black tar road, this solitary lamp, this backdrop of blacker-still night. The squawk of an errant egret returning to its nest long past curfew hour. White wings rowing through sky - a blur of anxious white, a flustered ghost in the moist black night.
No one can claim my space here, but whom do I really need? The cities are mixed fruit jam jars. Blended, you can be still so alone. That solitude is terrible. You are squeezed in like that extra shred of underwear into a box bursting at the seams. You are slung neck to neck with people bearing grim, no-trespassing signs for faces.
Now, my small town road is different. It murmurs its own stories as it unwinds. I am welcome to listen if I want, nobody invites. I am free to lend an ear. It is alright to eavesdrop. I may talk to myself, if I so choose and my road will listen. My monologue will not be an eccentric's soliloquy. Perhaps a gecko below a loose brick in a dark garden wall will chuck-chuck out of sympathy, or a shrew scuttling busily will squeak her disapproval. It is all right.
They don't mind. Just as I don't mind that child's laughter hurtling towards me in the dark, nuzzling its way into my ear, seeking a soft warm hole to bury its bone.
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