slow jazz month

We live our lives in this darkness of the North. The man in the furniture store, where I go looking for a new mattress to take me through the many hours of winter sleep, smiles at me under strip lighting. The girl giving me my hamburger in the Burger King drive-through, where I go because the November cold makes me crave meat, quickly closes the window against the chilly rain. A single mother in a hot flat in the slums shudders at the thought of going out.

Between meeting these people, I drive around in the dark. November is a thick, dark mist and we are waiting for winter to arrive with blistering cold and a sky full of stars. The studded tyres under my car make a rasping noise against wet asphalt. Last week's snow has melted away and a persistent rain falls. There are artificial lights everywhere but my body craves the daylight that it never sees and I know I will sleep badly and have strange dreams. I turn up the heat in the car, turn on the windscreen wipers, listen to slow jazz because my mind can't handle anything uptempo. I buy my burger in the drive-through because I can't stand being around too many people. My body is sluggish and aching, my mind is bordering on hysteria.

Strange, that life continues everywhere during these months of near-constant darkness. People sell mattresses, hand out burgers, hum absent-mindedly to the Christmas music in the supermarket, find common ground in complaining about the rain.

My soft bed in a dark room is exerting a pull on me. I can't see the stars but many dreams are born during winter, while a candle flickers on the window sill.