Strange Darkness

Snow turns to rain, then snows again. A great sea hangs over everything. When I walk back at night, the people I pass by turn into shadows whose movements are indistinct. Spend the hours avoiding pools of water by the roadside, and revel in the unremembering of sun, and of other light than this; produced in factories collapsing under the weight of their own twilight.

Sleep is heavy and dreamless, and in the mornings when the alarm wakes me, and it should be getting light, the night is still in full dominion of us all. Swing out of bed, and all movements are slow and laboured and each morning light witnessed is estranged with touches of the bizzare and nostalgic. Is this memory is this dream?

We gather by the windows at work, and someone notices that the darkness out there is different. People postulate a powercut, or offer that the street lamps may not be working. I think it may be the fact that the lights in the hotel next to the call centre are all off.

None of this is true, and all the lights are working, but each light trying to shine is ineffectual, dimmed and darkened in the air that is the breath of this season.

I run into Sarah in the rain on the way home. She has an umbrella and we shelter under there for a while.