good night, good night, wherever you are sleeping

It's easy to get distracted here. There's the arm-length tall hefeweizens at bars in the village, tiny bookstores with cold green floors and an employee that looks like Harriet the Spy (as an adult, that is), the glorious cold that came rushing in today, sending the neighborhood kittens into the half-burnt church. There are poetry readings and work of course and coffee with friends from another lifetime, when I was someone who never thought they'd return to the U.S., that they'd always live by the sea in Morocco. In red shoes, eating peppermint patties and drinking hot cider, I find myself wishing for some omniscient narrator who can tell me as nice (and as vague as that word entails) as life is right now, it will get better. That I'll wake up exactly where I want to be, which is somewhere far from the easy grit of this city. Where I can be completely alone, watching the stars' old light on some spot on the horizon, once again an unknown entity to all.