Remembering darkness (IP)

The city keeps its darkness to itself. We don't let it have it any more, try and push it out to the fringes of racial memory. I'm not sure we understand what darkness is for any more, other than as a place to preserve our nightmares, forbidden faces and shames.

The sun goes down and a sickly, sodium pallor falls over everyone as we carry on unabated. The city never sleeps. Instead it stares through our windows with red-rimmed eyes and jealousy as we burrow into our nests in its skin, warm and safe and blissfully asleep. I fear the city may be jealous of us, now that we have created it and left it with nothing but our waste.

There are secrets it keeps that we either don't care about or just don't know about any more. We think madmen litter our streets, unwashed and muttering to themselves; they probably think we litter their city, stopping whatever it is that we are so keen to banish from returning to the streets.

The city isn't a jungle or a forest, only idiots think that. If it were then night would fall and life would change. Animals would retreat to sleep, others emerge, scratching their waking frame, yawning into the cool night. Ask the birds what they think - the dawn chorus is a constant affair for them now. The beauty of their unison has become a tiresome tile in the mosaic of noise.

I remember being young, growing up in the country. The sun went down and darkness fell - genuinely fell - over the land. Lights were isolated, meeting points for itinerant insects preparing for their night out. And as I walked further from them I lost all sense of scale, knowing only that I was small and everything else was inconceivable.

The city doesn't let me remember this. Maybe it wants me to - I think it does - but it won't or can't. We are too busy and too full of ourselves and have no use for reflection, other than to ensure that we still look beautiful. I gave up walking at night the day I moved here and even now I feel something inside me shrinking to nothing.

Maybe I should dig into the shadows and find out what it is that we're hiding underneath the bright yellow lights, but the gatekeepers scare me. Sometimes they seem to scare themselves, which only makes it worse.

Sometimes I dream of the darkness, after I have shut the curtains, and my eyes and covered myself with the sheets to bring it back. And in my dreams I swell, losing my balance as I grow to unimaginable heights. As I grow taller I realise that from up here I can look into the darkest corners and find out what is hidden there. I turn around to look down on the secrets, bending down on my knees and look at the tiny people flicking tiny, insubstantial grains of shadow into the yellow. As I find the darkest part at the centre something grabs me, pulls me forward and with a jerk I am awake.