night traffic

When Katherine asked me why cars now run so late, what she really wondered is why we should be so long out of place. We're in our Six Month House, and the end is not in sight. The old house is problems in a litany: pipes that violate their codes, floors that reach towards each other but miss at the touch.

Here we are well past midnight. She has been sick, and I keep the bedside watch. We're listening to traffic on Wisconsin Avenue, conduit of night trucks and unknown cabs, a metal light stream that doesn't know to halt its flow. When she asks why cars now run so late, I tell her that they have always done, they will always do. A day of more familiar sounds is coming. Closer, still, after this ill and worried night.