The Little Escape

Another sleepless night. He lies awake, watching the sweep of the passing headlights across his bedroom wall. The shadows like prisoners caught escaping, isolated, trapped in a searchlight, trembling with discovery. And he, like a guard too humane or too indifferent to stop them, firing no weapon, raising no alarm.

Is this how it feels to be God? To watch shadows scuttling about in a brief illumination, knowing they are his to destroy but not save. Watching them fade away into the darkness before he has time to interfere.

Again and again his mind sweeps through the night, picking out worries, hopes, ideas. Pinning them in his sights for a second, then letting them go.

In the morning, the wall will be clear, and all the shapes will seem familiar, bathed with the sun. But for now there is this oppression, that he is both part of and against. In which he is both alert and helpless.