a lot of the time i stay up late alone. i walk the streets without leaving my room and peer in the houses of strangers without looking. in one i see a couple arguing. they scream at each other – cursing, hissing, pushing. finally the man lifts a heavy vase and smashes in the woman’s skull with one quick swipe. he then collapses beside her corpse, weeping, incapable of touching her, waiting inconsolable for whomever will arrive to punish him, but no one comes. i move on. in another i see an old woman sitting alone at a table draped in a perfect linen cloth. she knitted it herself. it has taken her twenty years. upon the table are cakes, tarts, biscuits and buns, glasses of squash and lemonade – sticky sugary treats for no one. she sits there alone, staring at what should be a happy banquet, not even an expression left with her for company. this is how she spends every night. i move on. in another house i see a family of friends gathered on chairs and sofas around a television. they stare into its screen, uncomprehending of its petty images or each other, absorbed in their own heavy expressions – too set to register even the lightest of thoughts, not one of them lifting so much as a finger to alter the inevitable procession of images they stare disinterestedly into. there was someone else there once – the suggestion of a consciousness or conscience that still somehow lingers and endures in the silence, but is long gone all the same from here now. only memories live here, given life by the light of a TV screen. ghosts made flesh. I move on. I stop at one last house. Within it I see a child, hunched over upon his bed, reading without looking at the words, speaking without making a sound even to himself. he thinks of how small the world is, how flat – of how many people he has known and loved who have since fallen from its edge and disappeared from his universe altogether, faster and faster, spilling like sand from a shattered hourglass. he doesn’t cry for his mother. he no longer waits to go out and play with his best friend. i do not move on. i stay with this boy, this child, so far from being a man. i want to see what will happen. i just want to see what happens to him next. it’s not as if i care. it’s not as if i care one way or another. it’s just curiosity, that’s all. it’s all just something to do.

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