My friend Dusk

If Dusk and I were friends, we would hold hands through the fields of ambiguity, in between the stalks of certainty and apathy. We would never be one thing. We'd be both, all, and nothing. We would brag about our freedom and it would torture us. Dusk would talk to me about how he conducted the pink shaded clouds to viciously invade the gray, like he had created a melody not made for ears. Like he'd licked a lion's backbone and found it was a sweet and luscious delicacy. Like he had felt a shift, a seminal shift in utter stillness. He would talk about the orchestrated chaos like a pyromaniac watching his own creation of euphoric destruction, licking his lips in delight. And when my eyelids would droop even the littlest bit, he would whisper, so I had to listen more keenly. His almost silent words would talk about the rush he got in the splitting second the streetlights woke up-so fast you could barely catch it, like they had been holding their breath. He would whisper about the neon's premature burst into dusk and he would wink at me, tickled at its impatience to spend a few moments with him. Dusk would laugh at his lackluster name-never in envy of the night's sharp T or the sun's bold three letters. No, dusk does not own that finesse, he is slippery but not sheik. He is elusive and proud to be in-between. Dusk shows up casually to the black tie event. He wears a dark gray hoodie and jeans. No one knows when Dusk comes or when he leaves. He eats all the appetizers he can stomach and slips out the back. Dusk calls out the trick or treaters and the smell of jasmine in November. Dusk demands you show up in your softest sweater...the one that you have had since you were awkward and you simply can't part with. Dusk encourages the silence of the city and the uproar of the night. He is secret in his own right and he demands nothing. He provides nothing for the thirsty vampire or the muted rooster.

Dusk would always talk my ear off, until my fighting eyes grew so tired my lids were sinking anchors. I would wake and Dusk would have left. And the neon would stand watch...bored. The rooster impatient for the routine to start and anxious for it to be over, and me in the certainty of Night...dull and questionless.