Last Night

After sunset last night, I sat in the dark
in my garage, listening to the sound of cars
running up and down the hill outside.
It’s a dead end at the top, so there’s not a lot of traffic
outside of the morning and afternoon rush hours
to and from school and work and life and such.
At a certain point, the numbers fall off to almost nothing.
When that time came, I got up off the concrete floor,
walked into my house and waited for complete silence.
It’s predictable, so common a daily occurrence,
this dying away to the nothing sound at night,
that I couldn’t have missed that one last car,
the sound of it coming up the hill, but stopping here, outside,
not passing on, but parking, the engine turned off,
the door closed, the jingling of the key in the lock.
And then you would always be here.
So odd not to hear you after dark.
I wonder if that might sound all right to you?
For me it only sounds all wrong.