It’s not an absence this 2am darkness— half-dark and half-lit by its unnatural glows— grabs hold of, firmly pulling it— this thing not an absence— growling from the dead black inside a stray dog’s too-mouthy head;
not just it, but the voices— untroubled and present if not too many, tucked into a more deeply darkened night. It takes them, not to gobble them up, but to throw them off cobble, cement and stone to open places, voices won’t normally come.