On My Way Home

So it's just before 1am and finally I'm off the bus. Immediately, I'm introduced to an unnaturally warm wind rushing forward off the mountain. Glancing up, low clouds mingle ominously heralding the onset of a summer storm or rapture; I'm discomforted. The sky is dark, but mostly grey, tinted yellow by the distant city lights on the other side of the ridge. The short peaks ahead of me are silhouetted, and dangerous. I reoccupy my thoughts with friendlier things, the cigarette in my hand, the music in my headphones, my bed. Fooled into safety, I stall at the crosswalk just in time for a dispatched taxi to miss me. The driver salutes my carelessness, four fingers short of a wave. I scamper across. I wait to cross again at a large, dead road, vacant for the exception of the off-duty buses lining up for bed. My light stays stubbornly red so I jaywalk. Not much further now as I start to climb the hill along the village road, also vacant. Streetlamps illuminate my path and highlight the lonely back street. 'Don't be lonely,' I say. 'I'm here.' And a truck barrels down without caution for its cargo or pedestrians. I'm not safe, so I quicken my pace but my music stops and all I'm left with is the slapping of feet against sandals and concrete and my own labored breathing. Slap slap slap slap slap inhale exhale inhale exhale. I stop suddenly just before the stairs and check behind me. No one at all, and I'm painfully aware of myself, and the cicadas. And a disturbing frog with a battered croak.