wrote this in workshop last week - not sure where this guy came from but he keeps showing up in my writing lately.

There was one chance I didn't take and I think about it late at night when all the world is quiet and no one's around - it's just me and the dark. All those small noises the house makes and the way I can't get comfortable. I'll get out of bed and shuffle my old man body to the kitchen, stand in front of the open fridge let that cold light wash over me - as if the half-empty shelves hold something I need as if somehow something in there could change things and after a while the cat will come up and rub against my legs and I'll close the fridge - maybe go over to the TV and watch part of some movie with the sound off or those ladies on the Home Shopping Network in all their hideous beauty trying to convince me that the junk they're selling will help me sleep through the night. Sometimes, I'll just stand by the window facing the street, the curtain lifted by one of my tired hands and I'll just watch the empty streets - maybe some trash blowing around or a stray dog sniffing and biting at fleas. Sometimes, there's a drunk, trying to find his car or trying to find his way home and sometimes there's nothing but the street and its varying shades of gray and black, maybe an old streetlight or two. And when it rains and the sidewalks grow dark with wet and the gutters rain like rivers and all the soot and trash pushes past and down into storm drains into sewers, I think about her skin - how pale it was, luminous - and those eyes and maybe the way she laughed and I wonder sometimes where she is and if she ever thinks of me. (c) 2010