Night dwindles and streaks of dawn stretch upward. A bird is making noise, but it is not because of dawn. The silence is pulled, stretched out too, over and over, skewered like saltwater taffy, pink but not sticky. The compressor is on. The compressor is off. The compressor is involved in an on-off game that is speeding up now, anxious for dawn. The compressor is cold-blooded: crouching on a rock as the sun creeps away over the horizon. The compressor is cold-blooded: it slows down at night. I am crouching too now, anxious over the absence of my sun, twitching, sleepless, dreamless.