Insomnia

It’s midnight. The time when the city really comes to life while the unenlightened sleep in cozy beds. My roof is cold but I accept the chill because it makes me feel alive. Like how my feet dangle off the edge of the wall. Barefoot of course, one too many shoes have been lost to the deadly drop.

Shoes should probably be worn considering it’s almost December though that’s nothing a pair of wool socks can’t handle, right? A warm drink would be nice. The burn of bourbon is enough to warm me through and through as I look out at the life blossoming in the city below me.

A group of twenty-somethings crawl from bar to bar, so intoxicated their shadows seem to stumble, acting on their own. I sip my drink and I watch my people. A woman is walking home with a greasy apron and a tired gait shuffling inside news paper stuffed boots that slide with each step.

There’s a man sitting on a bench, drinking a cup of coffee from the diner across the street in a chipped ceramic mug that used to be white but now it’s more of a dusky, grimy color. He sees me and he waves. Toasting with his dingy white mug, three fingers wrapped around the handle.

I nod back, toasting with my own cup that’s not chipped or dingy. Instead, pristine and clean. You have a lot of seconds to cleanthings when the seconds don’t matter and the world is sleeping. We stare, blue eyes against brown in a tango of fatigue. He gives up first, getting up from the bench and walking away.