I find when the lights are out and you lie down, you can disappear altogether

Some time around one o'clock the party dies down and I'm left alone in an empty room. I take to the streets. I miss my bus but it is alright because I had my heart set on walking the moment I left. It's only six or eight kilometres anyways. Up a hill, down the other side. If I waited for the next bus I'd freeze.

Besides, you see so much more on foot. I used to know neighbourhoods from the backseat of the car, but I always seemed to miss how they're all connected.

And setting one foot in front of the other you can go places.

Past the house grandad built after their house in Vancouver was appropriated by the government for the War. Past the place where L'algy was shot, one of the area's few unsolved murders. Past where Arnie's house used to be, where we broke in through a basement window and wrote ARNIE CALL ME 461-4252* in sharpie on the livingroom wall. It's the sort of thing that gets permanently etched into your memory. I stole a copy of Gulliver's Travels from the crawlspace. The house was filled with dead air and the old smoke of pipe tobacco. He never called.

Descend with the dewpoint toward the sea. Curl into a cocoon.

Sleep.

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* That number is no longer my number and may possibly have been reassigned. Please don't call it.