Things I don't know before Midnight

Watch Em get on the bus, wave at her in the yellowy warmth while I stand by the empty bus-stop. Watch the bus pull away, and in my memory the bus is silent. I don't know why. I should head home for I am extraordinarily tired. Another thing I don't know the reason for either. I slept well last night - even if that sleep was threaded through with deep dreams. College days reunions, people I haven't seen for years, decades.
The night is too clear and spectral and beautiful to go home though. Everything is sharp and clear, as if preserved in an ice that not only freezes, but sharpens things too. The angles of houses are like knives, and the halo of the street lamps looks like it could slice up space.
Even breathing seems dangerous.
Space. No clouds tonight and I can see stars. Orion's Belt. The only constellation anyone can ever name. Why is that the only one I've ever known? The stars look oddly blue, the colour of an absolute zero cold.
I go for a short meander down New Church Road, toward Portslade then cut up into that lose section of streets that run up to Portland Road. Suburbia coiled like snakes. No-one in these streets. No cars pass by. The lights behind the curtains of rooms hide their secrets and their occupants, and it starts to feel like I'm walking through some future-museum exhibition of English suburbia in the early 21st century.