Crickets whisper notes as light as the moon, whose autumnal gaze drips through the clouds; a sky made of stories, a sky made of lives, a sky that seems made to be held in the mind. Off in the distance a siren cries out, the sound weeping notes that splash at my feet. Silent light screams through the windows of buildings, buildings that sleep while we’re all in them building. Bodies are shuffling and plodding around, stopping and sniffing and looking at me. Their coats are so similar, their frightened eyes dance, their step is unsure but it carries them on. This campus, so bright in the daylight and brimming with souls, is theirs for the taking when darkness unfolds. As the music of crickets becomes a new silence, raccoons throughout campus shuffle and plod. They are out in the night and a part of the dark, the dark that I sit in to soak up the night. Off they will scatter out into the night, off of the grass and into a tree, their paws making noises that too become silence. On goes my light—and back on my bike—I look back behind me and they’ve all disappeared. As will I.