11pm is the New Midnight

11pm is the new midnight. Sat on my sofa against the window. The curtains are broken, somehow, and through the now-uneven material, the sound of cars and voices, already half-drunk on a Wednesday night. Seagulls too, an echo from the small hours of last summer.
The night feels wet and black. A day of white drizzle and white clouds. The edges of everything fading away, an attic-entropy. The lofty heights of buildings decapitated, the end of the sea softened and tideless and boatless. Struck by the silence of the waves. That double-glazing silence again.
I dreamt last night of 136 London Road in Worcester. Corin was living in the basement living room. A cosy windowless place of cushions and sofas. In the dream I couldn't believe that I had returned and was allowed back in the house. The entrance to an adjoining room boarded up. Rumours of something there that no-one talked about.
I slipped in the rain on the way to work this morning. That dizzying moment of panic as balance falls away. Then that curious resignation, those seconds stretched to hours. Landing with some grace and little injury but no dignity. A middle-aged woman asks if I am okay before disappearing into a building where she works. It looked like she was fleeing me.
At my feet are scattered old horror comics from the 1970s, paintbrushes, erasers, a mobile phone and a bottle of ink.
A page torn out of a new sketchbook because I could not wait for the ink to dry and smudged the face irreparably of a 1950s style woman. Her eyes glance away, do not meet mine. The first drawing I had attempted in a while. The new sketchbook, already harmed. A guilty object, bad omen.
It all used to flow so freely but the ink just seems to clog these days.