I sleep with the window open
The air, now chilled with autumn, rushes in to sap away my resolve
Waking me from troubled sleep
Covered with only the thin blue cotton sheet from my college days
Comforting, though it’s hard to gauge when last the warmth of another supplanted the foothill of blankets amassed beside me
The loneliness of night:
When only cars pass below
Sounding like freight trains as they clamor over the slab of steel prostrate on the ground
Protecting the suspensions from the pockmarked face of asphalt
Each a brutish chime filling my apartment
The stark vulgarity lashing out
A garbled cry, anguished and dejected
Dragging from my subconscious
Memories of a different time
Now free
Jostling for position and attention, as though I am the jester king
Holding ghostly court
Clad in the stark regalia of bitterness years in the making
Pour me a glass of that vintage and to what shall we all toast?