Mystery

It’s a dark night, the kind of night where everything except the flicker of light inside your home is muffled. Outside the windows, everything that used to exist has lost its hold on its outlines – there is nothing left but a thick silence and wisps of dissipated forms. Your room, with its table edges and yellow wallpaper, is the small haven of reality that remains. In the kitchen the radio plays gently, and a speckled cat warms itself against your thigh. There is a book on the chair beside you but this world right here is too present, too heavy to lose yourself in another.

There is mystery woven around us. You know it. You feel it when you catch a glimpse of the fog that veils the mountains, in the moment before the sun disappears and grey descends, in the twilight over wet grass, and the glimmer of streetlamps on a river. You see it in the rain that pours down on the curdling ocean, and in the candle that flickers against the stone walls of the church.

Mystery spreads warmth in your belly. Who knows what exists around us, what magic there is to discover? The darkness dances with hidden fireflies, the wooden chairs wink at you as they creak. Without mystery, darkness is lonely and stifling. But when you open your eyes a little wider, it becomes a cocoon threading filaments together, whispering as it glimmers and spins us around and around. We laugh at fantastical stories, but in the depth of the night our hearts beat a little faster and, tripping over ourselves, we look for colors to paint onto the dark tapestry; giving form to something unnamed. Our darting eyes try to catch, swallow, and hold in our bodies the something gleaming always just on the periphery. Curled up in your armchair, mystery will coax you through the long hours of the night.

The cat begins to purr and the radio hums a jingle from the store down the road. You can feel the furniture, the walls, breathing quietly, still.