It looks like a photograph- not a mere picture, but an honest-to-God act of photography. Like someone spent a lot of time and energy arranging the whole thing. The streets are shining in a way that can only be described as rain-slicked, although I doubt they're all that slick, really. The lamp posts are positioned just right, so the orb of soft, amber light they emit fades to almost nothing just before the next, an endlessly repeating row of perfect orbs. The shops and buildings are boarded up against the night, no one walks the sidewalks. If photographers could change the climate they'd be spot on with this as well. It's October-cold, even though the calendar says December. It doesn't snow, it doesn't even have the decency to rain. Just wind and iron cold, spreading like pain into fingers and toes and shoulders and ears and any bits of skin that are unfortunate enough to escape the confines of a long coat. Across the street a television glows blue-white in a sitting room, a brave stance against the sleepy, stupid hateful cold outside. Looking into that room I can imagine it's warm and happy and there are no worries at all. Clouds above, a ceiling against all unearthly heights that might lay beyond in hope and high beauty. The stars are hidden and put away, like heirloom silver they have no place on like tonight. The moon and stars may be bright white jewels against a jet sky of such pure hope that the coldness of the night would seem invigorating, full of promise and thrumming with energy, instead of funereal, still and hushed. But the velvet of clouds smothers them softly, lovingly, as gentle as murder by morphine.
I grab the fucking tree and drag it inside, to the smells of Christmas cookies and family. It's too damn depressing out there.
