The rain was coming down hard now, bouncing off the tin roof. The air was sticky and thick. One spot in the corner leaked. It had ever since I could remember. We’d always just emptied the metal bucket and put it back before the next rain. Maybe I should get that fixed. Just because my father didn’t, doesn’t mean I can’t. I could be proactive. But what was the point? This house had to already be saturated with mildew and black mold. I’m sure that’s not healthy. Maybe I should move. It’s just me here anyway. Not far, but to somewhere less moldy. Disgusting. This place is so disgusting.

But change takes energy, and I don’t have any these days. I used to garden, but even that had been taken from me in my old age when my fingers began to become too stiff and clumsy to work the garden and my knees too wobbly and bony to kneel on. I thought I’d be older when I felt this old, but here we are.

Outside, a street light flickers on and off. It’s been doing that lately. That’s one thing that’s new. It never used to flicker. I hated how it glared through my bedroom window at night, but now I hated the flickering even more. It wasn’t even a regular flickering. Sometimes it would flash, sometimes it would flicker. How annoying.

I sat and stared out of the foggy window through the rain at the flickering light. On and off and on and flicker and off and flicker flicker…as annoying as it was, it was also calming. Like a love note from the universe reminding me that I’m still alive and things are still changing around me. I just haven’t changed in awhile. That doesn’t mean everything else has stopped.

I watched the light turn on and off randomly for awhile. I began to lose track of time, and for a moment I even started to think I could see a pattern to the madness. On and off and flicker flicker. It reminded me of Morse code. I learned Morse code when I was little; I wanted to be a spy when I grew up. My father told me that Morse code was an important tool for spies. If I wanted to be a spy I’d have to learn all sorts of codes.

But I didn’t become a spy. And I didn’t learn very many codes. Really just Morse code. I decided to decode the flashes as if they were a code, just for fun. “Fun,” ha! What a miserable human I was to find staring at a light fun.

A-r-e-y-o-u-t-h-e-r-e

Wait, what the fuck? Is the street light talking to me? Have I finally lost my mind? I must have imagined it. I don’t have any loving family, and I don’t have any friends, as sad as that is to say. Who would want to talk to me, let alone send me messages via streetlight?

I must be going crazy. I must have imagined it, or subconsciously made the flashes spell out a phrase so I’d feel less alone. I forced myself to divert my attention from the flashing light for a moment, and turned my head to look at the clock. Illuminated, and then in darkness, and then lit again. It was getting late. How did I kill this much time? What have I been doing? How did I even spend my day?