Ivy

The ivy, eaten by nighttime, crowded around the lamp post.  In the bluish light of the single bulb, the ivy looked like waves frozen in motion, suspended in a desperate reach toward their last saving grace.  I too reached with my eyes, slouched on a park bench.  I stared until I couldn't see the moths fluttering around the bulb, or the scalloped outlines of the waxy leaves.  Once the light went out, me and the ivy and the moths would lose each other, because only one thing connected us.  Night air pressed against my back.  I could feel its cold creeping along my shoulders and on my jeans through the bench slats.  I wanted to run up to the lamp and bury myself in the ivy, right smack in the whitewash of light.  But Alex was right.  I was just a prisoner, watching.