semi insomniacs’ site

This is how they advertise the highest residential building in San Antonio. I’ve been staying here for almost a week with an old friend whose husband recently died. She has a two bedroom unit on the twenty-first floor and from the dead man’s bedroom I watch the lights over the seventh largest city in the United States burn in tiny blurs in the distance.

Somewhere out there is the home where I raised my children long ago, before I moved away to find a cooler climate. It’s the end of October and everyone waits for the day the temperatures will drop. Dust covers empty lots where grass was green back in spring, but everything is brown now. And there are not many empty lots left anyway. Concrete meets asphalt and creeps into areas where fields were once full of cows. Where clouds formed and dropped rain like a Christening.

This morning I listen to the sirens down on the streets rising above the rubber roar of the morning commute. A train has an occasional something to say. A car radio wave makes its way all the way up to the top of this residential tower of elderly citizens. It doesn’t feel independent at all. I feel I am one with every car I see, their headlights scooting along slowly, playing in the human maze.