Coming Home Late
I stayed late at the office the other night. Not because I had a sea of paper to deal with. Not quite that committed. I stayed late so that I could take a bit of a stroll through the industrial park at night. It’s just so damn beautiful in its lonely bleak. Not a soul around. Everything locked up until the AM. Gentle drift of snow through the streetlights. Just the comfortable orange of sodium-flavoured lamps to warm the place up. Light fixtures placed 3/4 of the distance to the roof and at 16 foot intervals on the walls of buildings. Not enough light to work by, but enough to give dim highlight to the time-stained wallblocks. The chain link fences all hold a bit of snow; little rails that just barely rest on the inner diamonds of the fence. Mysterious footsteps in the snow tell an 8am story of toil and sweat. Oil stains in the snow from long-neglected, barely afforded vehicles. The utility train tracks – seldom used by my count – are ghostly in the snow, but somehow gorgeous. Tire tracks frozen into the road, they’ll be overwritten tomorrow. Car headlights off in the distance, t-boning the plane of this street. The crunch of snow underfoot and the always-there city noise in the background. The late bus makes its lonely way through the place. Nobody’s on it when I board.