The Streetlight

There's a time, every morning around dawn, when the streetlights flicker off and the morning sun illuminates the empty streets. I hate this time more than anything else.

That's what I dreaded most about the day. At night I wander from streetlight to streetlight, without a possession to my name - though the name itself hardly belongs to me anymore. I gave it up many years ago, along with anything else that made me unique, that made me stand out from the other streetrats that cowered behind every city dumpster and abandoned, defiled building. All of it has ceased to matter. All that remains now is me, my meager squandering of food, and my beloved streetlights.

Time matters not anymore. Faces blur together in my memory. Events are no longer certain, they might have occurred, they might not have. They might have happened yesterday, today, ten years ago, tomorrow. I would not know the difference. Or perhaps they only happened in my dreams.

I never dreamed of streetlights. They were real.



The wind blew softly through my hair. I could hear it, whispering, coaxing me along with its gentle words. The streetlight I stood under illuminated a small radius of cracked sidewalk and deserted black road. I was a wanderer, and the wind was my guide. I had nowhere to go, nowhere to be, and no one to remember my name.

Oh, but what a name it was, in those days of sorrow and excitement. In the days of adventure and intrigue. In the days before the streetlights.

I gazed at the edge of the circle of light encompassing my abandoned shadow. I was hesitant to move past it, to break the safety of the light, to move out into the darkness again. I spent all my nights wandering from streetlight to streetlight, as they were my havens. My oases from the desolate lives that everyone around me led.

I could not decide if I should yet move on or remain in this last haven. I stood on the edge of a vast stretch of land, not quite desert, not quite alive. That was wrong. There were many living things in the desert. But none of them provided comfort to a weary traveler. None held any answers for the lost, for the meek, for the lonely. It’s good, then, that I was none of those.

But the space in front of me would soon surround me nonetheless, if I chose to cross the soft border of light I still gazed at so intently. I was not looking for answers from the light. I was not looking to the land to tell me what to do. I was not even looking at the streetlight for assurance or guidance, for I knew it would provide none. The answers had to come from the wind. For this was the same wind that had touched so many others, that had grazed so many cheeks, and tousled the locks of so many wanderers like myself. Perhaps it was the same wind that had taught me so much before, that had shown me the path when I was just as unsure of my road as I was tonight.

I liked to think that it was the same wind that reached the others I used to know. Part of me hoped they still took time to stop and ponder the wind as I had taught them to, so long ago. They had at first looked at me strangely, perhaps questioned my connection with sanity, as I could not tear myself away from the night sky, the light gray clouds, the enigmatic wind. But the longer I stood there in silence, the more relaxed they became, and soon we were all still, listening to the sound of the wind, searching for the answers in the sky.

And it spoke to them. It told them things that it never told me. For the wind never whispered the same thing twice, and it sounded different to everyone who listened.

I stood, and waited for the wind. It had quieted for a moment, and I knew then that I was the only one who listened anymore. I knew that I was all alone, that there was no one left from that time. No one who thought of the wind and the sky and the clouds and the streetlights anymore. It was only me. It was only me again, for it was only me to begin with.

I hushed my thoughts and focused on the wind. Dawn would break in mere hours, and I must be away from here by then. But where was here? And where was there? I decided to move out, into the open desert plain, far away from human interaction. That is what I decided. But it wasn’t what the wind wanted.

It became apparent that the wind was telling me to turn around. To go back. To follow the trail of streetlights once again, but this time to follow a different path. I would not retrace my steps. I did not know where I would go, but it wouldn’t be back to the same place.

What I didn’t know was the wind was leading me somewhere. It was showing me the path to what I truly desired, or thought I did. Perhaps I really only wished for peace of mind. But I didn’t know that at the time the wind showed me the way.

I also didn’t know that I was completely and utterly wrong. There was still someone out there, someone I used to know, who remembered the wind. Who remembered how to listen to it, how to discover what it was saying, and how to follow its instructions.

Someone who still remembered me.



And he was standing there, in the middle of the dark night, eyes closed, listening intently. And the wind would lead me back to him.