ce soir j'ai mes devoirs à faire, vous savez la routine

I wrote the following on the back of a take-out menu at work a couple weeks ago.

I live in a city now. Growing up in Mississippi I used to lay awake at night and listen to the absence of humanity; I would instead hear the ever-present crickets and the swishing and swaying of ancient tree branches. Sometimes a dog would bark out his frustrations into the open night and rip up the silence. Once there was a whipporwhill outside my window.

Next I lived in the squished suburbs of Texas, which held a constant stream of car doors slamming and smart business suits clattering up to their front doors. I used to lay awake in the early mornings as the chain of cars started up and began the backing-out-of-the-driveway-ballet.

Then I was in a dorm way the hell on the other side of the Mason-Dixon line. I heard routine mowers and I heard the distant dull echo of empty voices on television, and always, always, ripples of laughter in the hallways, part of an ongoing joke I was never in on.

Now I live in the city. There is no single discernible sound, just multitudes of overlapping voices, alongside the constant rumble of motors and horns, growls of trucks, the sirens screaming injustice against the night, bicycle bells trilling for attention, and sometimes a dog barking, but here he's speaking out of turn. I'm a part of something much larger now, some grand wheel in motion I have no control over. I am a part and I am apart.