Do you ever sit and just look out your window?
What do you see?
Where does your mind go?
Do you think beyond the street and sidewalk below?
Do you consider the multitude of people,
beyond your lines of sight?
The trees
and animals.
Nature.
Distant land,
all different.

Is your window open?
Can you hear the city outside?
What do you pick out?
The sounds of cars,
the distinctiveness of buses,
diesel engines,
a siren?
Voices.
Are they excited?
Maybe a laugh?
Can you hear a dog bark from where you sit?
Do you listen to the noises coming over the rooftops?
How far can you stretch your ears out into that city of sound?
At what distance is it just noise?
Do you hear that hum?

Do you look up at the sky?
What is up there?
Clouds?
What color are they?
Do airplanes fly above your window?
Is it night?
Is there a moon?
Can you see beyond the city glow?

Who else is looking up with you?

Every night is more painful, more terrifying than the last. The fears
come flooding in, one on top of another, compounding, unresolved
from the nights before. They build, growing larger and stronger, til
they are all that occupies my mind. They grow and push and tear,
shredding my brain, destroying my control.

Alone! How I hate to face them. I cry out into the darkness, a void
that envelopes me. My fears are a gaping maw, full of teeth, waiting
to swallow me.

They are coming. They are close. I am paralyzed. There is nothing I
can do. The waiting is insanity.