Eleven at night, keys in hand

Eleven at night. Rain on the window. You're patting your pockets for keys, and you don't even want to go. You're going because tomorrow morning exists, and waking up with nothing in the house isn't an option. So it's shoes on, out the door, toward the one place still open or the one number still answering. Twenty minutes later you're home, relieved about nothing.

That errand wasn't desire. It was a fire drill. The cigarette invented the emergency and sent you out into the rain to handle it. Then came the pocket checks before bed, the count of what's left, the math on who opens early on Sundays. All of that was work, and none of it was rest.

That whole kind of night is closed. No pocket check. No count. No math. The night ends when you say so. It's a plain kind of rich, the kind nobody puts on a poster. An evening that asks nothing of you is one of God's softer gifts, and it's yours to keep. Nothing out there needs fetching.

When the evening winds down, put your keys wherever they live and leave them there. Let that be your last errand. Tell God goodnight like you mean it. Thank You for a night with nowhere to go. Lights off. Shoes by the door. Home, all the way through.