Night, a Profile

Night here is haunting, it is alive. Its creatures do not sleep. The street dogs run in their packs challenging others until the winners are distinguished through merciful squeals. Roosters strut and howl at the moon, longing for their time to come again. Women work into the night testing every piece of kitchenware they have in tiny metal-on-metal symphonies. The men, not to be outdone, bark orders at their children - who are up three hours past their bed time and scream back with tiny, tired voices.

The stars are a myriad and distinguished in Honduras's black, sticky sky. Their light seems to cluster in a cottony film right out of human touch, but does not reach my feet. Night here is haunting and thick and snuffs out the moon and the stars with velvety ease.

This velvet cloth sweeps aside to make room for the streetlights veiled heavily with orange and rusted plastic coverings, spilling light-goo through the alleys and into doorways, but never reaching "those places you must not go," as if legally contracted.

The night walkers are not the good kind - the sensible creatures have turned in. The sensible creatures know what the expect if they don't. Or they learn quickly, as we have...