It’s 3:30 in the morning, I’m flipping through clothes hangers and I can’t find a single paint smudged garment. Instead it’s all the rustle of plastic on plastic and dresses yet unstained.

Outside clouds are rolling over. The parking lot is dark.

I move through the apartment, turning off lamps, leaving plugged in the white twinkle lights that cast shadows on the eggshell colored walls, the beige carpet. The room is made an eerie grey by their muted glow. Still, it’s better than total darkness.

If I were on the other side of the country, I’d tip toe down the stairs and into her empty room and put on one of the twenty acrylic stained button downs that hang in her closet.

It might be dark and I might flip a light switch to help me make my way.

I’d wear those colors to sleep and maybe then I’d feel safe. Maybe then I’d not toss and turn and get up to rifle around for Tylenol PM before drifting off with the light left on on purpose.

I thought I’d gotten over this. Hazy fear.

I haven’t had it for months now. Haven’t pictured so clearly some indistinct shadow appearing in my door frame. Haven’t imagined how I’d see it there and know in a moment my life had changed forever.

I wake up late and tired.

I want to sleep all day now that its light out and safe.

Want to crawl under blankets and stay for days in unmoving air that cools when I crack the covers and smells everything like my own oatmeal soaped body, or tea rose linen spray, and nothing like sticky tears and sweat.

I think I want this silence, this time, but know I’ll never take it. Know I’d only throw off the sheets with a need to move forward, away from the grey that comes when everyone goes and it’s just me, alone and wondering if it’s always been there, this darkness, below the surface.

So what I really want is to move through the daylight and lie on my back when the deep blue sets in.

Watch sidereal waves. See constellations form, break apart.

Stars stand out against California skies like specks of mica on grey rock.

I want to be that grey, that rock.

I want to sleep with someone in it, the grey, the blue. I want our movements to swell and fall, like tears.

Sometimes and for no apparent reason I think of this old movie house I went to once in Wilsal Montana. It had one screen, one black and white projector, one daily showing and a string of white bubble lights flashing in time around a sign that said CINEMA in block letters.

Sometimes and for no apparent reason I think of this place and imagine scrunching down into a squeaky seat in the middle row, propping my feet up on the chair in front of me and disappearing into the grey space between shadow and light.