HAMPTON RENAISSANCE

Nocturnal Musings

by Solyana Bekele

 

There’s something about the night that makes emotions unbearably heavy; something about the dim light of the full moon that makes sadness despair; solitude, utter loneliness; tiredness, back-breaking fatigue. Maybe there’s a scientific explanation for it; something about the position of Earth, the moon, and stars–pulling and tugging at our fragile hearts, compelling us to believe that there’s nothing else more real than what we feel right then and there; the force of gravity not only holding things in place but ripping apart the seams of our hearts and minds, prolonging time, and once again making simple solitude desperate loneliness. 

 

As deep as that sounded, that may not at all be a universal feeling. I’m not so cocky as to generalize the nightly musings of my brain to everyone else’s experience–but it can’t just be me, right? 

 

I lay awake at night, every night, in bed, but perpetually separated from the exodus of sweet slumber by crippling insomnia. I gaze at the lonely moon and wonder does she ever feel lonely? A barren rock, floating through space, forever tied to Earth’s orbit–looking on in somnolence as people live and die in ignorant bliss of their cosmic isolation. Does she get lonely up there? Or do the stars keep her company? 

 

Is she maybe the only one then that truly understands the nocturnal musings of my brain?