Every night starts out as though it were an ocean. I hang on to the daylight strangely, absently, not recognizing the trickling away in rivlets of time until I'm pressurized by the darkness and pleasantly bathing in the vastness of light's disguise. Where only an hour before life would drone on past me in a muddled vortex of sounds and images that trail off into a blurred oblivion, now it serenades me. The strain to locate the source from which a sound will come, the strength my eyes will use to differentiate a shadow from an empty space, these are exercises in divinity. I see more truth in the darkness than I have ever seen in the tainted cover of daylight. The night washes over us in safety and we stop pretending to behave the way we see ourselves in the mirror. The night has no reflection and it doesn't understand fear.
I swim in the darkness with brief visits ashore in convenience stores with flourescent lighting and stranded, uniformed counter clerks. They're doomed on dry land for an eight-hour shift full of antiseptic cleanser and microwavable burrito pies. Whatever apathy they convey in their voices as they say "thank you" or "have a good night" after counting out my change is overshadowed by the envy behind their eyes as they watch me turn away and dive back into the current of the night.
The current leads and pulls me in a way in which I have only the illusion of control. I can stop, of course, and pull myself up and onto an island of light but as surely as the air is drawn into my chest so am I drawn into the lure of the eventide. I become part of night's circulation; a single corpustle in the bloodstream of this massive organism. I give way, I crumble, my will seems lost as I become a small part of night's own consciouness.
The transition to morning is different from that to night. I feel every drop vanish as the sea in which I'm submerged evaporates into the sunrise. I'm left soaked in it and still filled with longing, like a fish drowning in the open air. The only rescue I ever find is the sound my blinds make as I shut them before I collapse into the world behind my closed eyes. The last comfort is knowing that the hours will dissolve away and again I'll be able to swim.