Here I sit at this late hour. With every light on, I've got the power. This is where I do my living. I am one with my sofa. Into this cushion, I do meld. Alone in the light of 40 watt bulbs, I wait for the heaviness of eyelids to seize me. Alone, it should be noted, is not living even if the word is denoted by the description of the space. Dead Zone might be a better fit. What isn't me, isn't sentient. What living thing would allow his body to be ravaged by a non-heroic undertaking? That living thing is me. Here I sit at this late hour. With every light on, I now retire.

What was unknown has taken shape. With every addition of detail, hope diminishes. Despair too withers. For hope is now becoming real. Hope breaks in at night and steals away the things of night. Darkness now is rendered obsolete. But hope is a savior who you will not see if you will not see.

Something is different about them. They are lit from the inside like house fire. With words, they shed light like so many extra layers of clothes. Even a wise man is drawn in by their sales pitch. Who wouldn't want a miracle for the low price of asking? Who wouldn't accept a dream made true if all they had to do was declare it? Who wouldn't say yes to a generous universe with an open checkbook?  A rare person it would be to turn their nose up at such an offer. The gurus know this. They know too that the same message delivered by any other salesman would render a red flag, a phone slammed back onto the receiver, a definitive "no". By what voodoo do they defy our sense of what is too good? It's simple. They've got winning smiles, ear to ear, and their mission has been blessed by the smiling prince of fiery darkness.

Carbonated beverages, send me floating up in reverie. Sodas, pops, and colas send me onward filled with glee. Aluminum and glass contain the secret of my unrestricted happiness. Especially when they're citrusy, there's nothing then that can limit me except, of course, for later when the acid  rises in my throat. But note for note, there's no feeling I'd dare emote which could possibly denote the same sensation. Orange is much better than lemon and lemon is much better than lime. Soft drinks refresh a parched heart even more smoothly than time. In a pinch, Orange Crush will suffice but if you love me don't pour Shasta, Fanta, or Slice. If you want even one kiss, it's got to be Sunkist. If you really love me, I think you'd already know this.

Upon his shoulders, his skull sits poised for excellence. Heavy is the head that's held in hands, fingers tangled in convoluted thoughts. Inner ear infections are the source of misdirection for imbalance is brought to him by a compromised equilibrium. He thinks, therefore he is qualified to make this judgment. Big brains do not equal brains full and wise. A wrinkle in mind draws an erratic line. The stars can be connected by dots. Out there it would make sense to follow the linear narrative to its logical conclusion . In here, there is no sense to be made. We can pretend to understand but we are adrift in head space. Always when we wonder, we are lost. We are lost in wander, are we not? Just when he thought his head would explode, it probably does. The unobservant we is too busy checking subject-verb agreement to notice the gray matter dripping from our earlobes. As we finish the last heaping spoonfuls of our breakfast cereal, we ask ourselves aloud, "What was he thinking?"

Flight, like birds take. You'll be up and gone by the next day. Soon our lives will be short one you. You'll go without leaving a note. You'll run away without stopping to explain. You won't have time for postcards. In vain, we'll check the mail. Then we'll rail against the heavens. What were you thinking to leave us? What sort of God would let you go? Is there any love without chains? It's nice to say that love's about release, that love will set us free, but lovers love to leave. The freedom we so embrace, is the freedom to set ourselves on fire.

We've looked and have not seen. We've gotten close enough but have known no close encounters. Any such thing we have known has been pushed down into the dirt with the other secrets. Beyond us is much that is beyond us. Who can say what is out there? Who can say what exists on the other sides of stars? What might exist within us? Carbon is proof of life, proof of carbon-based life, proof of life like ours, life we are familiar with, life we recognize as life. We look up into the night and imagine our own faces drawn in the stars. We look down and imagine our faces glistening on the water. We lean in. We drink deep. Into the deep we go headlong into the thirsty rapids. As our head bobs up and under in the unforgiving tide of our reflection, we cast our eyes beyond the stars. We hope that there is more in the cosmos than ego. We hope that beyond our present darkness, some force would lift us from the water whether it be spaceship or hand of God.

120 days leading up to Christmas we countdown, anticipate, and prepare. Retail grunts in aprons live off of adrenaline and caffeine. Their smiles widen, whiten, as customer expectations reach insurmountable levels. Shoppers max out credit lines, deplete sleep reserves, and cancel the checks on all kindness. The jingle jangle songs of the season build steadily and rise to terminal velocity. Then crescendo, explosion, and end scene. 

At the end of a long hallway in the back room of your soul, there is a junk drawer that time and mind have forgotten. Yet, even while memory does not serve, the items contained therein inform your movement, your breathing patterns, your neuroses. There's that fake Mickey Mantle card your former friend from 5th grade tricked you into taking in exchange for your Jose Canseco rookie card. There's a certificate you received for perfect attendance many, many years before you learned to embrace truancy. At the program, you gawked up at the tree tall man who was your school's principal. Heroes then were easy to come by, hardly anyone had let you down. There's a set of keys you used to carry around. They didn't unlock anything. There's a pack of chrysanthemum seeds you bought but never planted. There's a hot wheels car you found at the bottom of a cereal box. Mom and Dad made you share the toy with your kid brother. Somewhere in there wedged between the pages of a Gideon Bible is a girl's phone number which you showed off to all the boys in Sunday school. The girl and the telephone number were both borne of your imagination and encroaching fear that someone would find out how lonely you were.

There are pictures of people you don't know in places you don't recognize. It's a strange feeling to remember just enough to know there's something very important or special that you can't drudge up. There are bottle caps you picked up on the way home from school and a button that popped off your favorite shirt. There's the postcard a friend sent you when they visited the Alamo and the funeral program you got the next year when they died unexpectedly. Everything in this box is dead or marred beyond recognition. You wouldn't know it if you ran into it or if it were standing right in front of you. Even if you did know it, you'd probably just be horrified for having seen a ghost. You might expect such forgotten relics would be locked away in a hidden vault but the truth is you don't really want to find them. You'd rather not see which is why you've thrown it all into a drawer in the first place.

The stars hang dead from the rafters of the galaxy. They are the most beautiful dead things. When we die they siphon all the lifeblood and living cells out of us and replace all of that with preservatives so that we look as nice as the mannequins in the mall and have the shelf life of a case of Twinkies. They lay our bodies down in satin-lined refrigerator boxes and throw some dirt over us in a hole. When the grave robbers dig us up, they will find no light flickering. And yet, are we not more than fiery rocks exploding in the sky? Surely, the light in us is not put out.