A less startling image is brought to mind by a long pine twig which has lain several weeks now across the electric wires. As it emerges from darkness, I notice how the lines bend slightly down from the weight of it, and suddenly I picture the twig being slid up and down the wires like a bottleneck over guitar strings. I wonder what sound the wires might make were they to be plucked? I wonder what has caused such fancies to enter my head?
The night has drifted by in a haze of jasmine. I have the strange feeling that I've not been here. I can't account for every hour, but have no idea where my mind might have drifted all that time. It didn't strangle the sky, I'm sure, but still, my woolgathering has left me without an alibi. For this, and because I may have used up all the dreams that might have filled my coming sleep, perhaps I was unwise not to have paid attention. I blame the jasmine, though. Who can concentrate when seduced by flowers having the power to induce transports of the mind, and then erase all memory, leaving one susceptible to hallucinatory visions?
I'll try to do better in future. And perhaps things are less desperate than I feared at first light. I see the sky's color returning, and the gray bruises are turning pale, being revealed as no more than smears of powder. Ah, it's only theatrical makeup, then. I've come in at the end of some celestial performance and misinterpreted what I've seen. I can sleep easy, and maybe there will be dreams after all. Maybe they'll show me that half of the night that's missing.