the night sets softly with the hush of falling leaves casting shivering shadows on the houses through the trees and the light from a street lamp paints a pattern on my wall like the pieces of a puzzle or a child s uneven scrawl up a narrow flight of stairs in a narrow little room as i lie upon my bed in the early evening gloom impaled on my wall my eyes can dimly see the pattern of my life and the puzzle that is me from the moment of my birth to the instant of my death there are patterns i must follow just as i must breathe each breath like a rat in a maze the path before me lies and the pattern never alters until the rat dies and the pattern still remains on the wall where darkness fell and it s fitting that it should for in darkness i must dwell like the color of my skin or the day that i grow old my life is made of patterns that can scarcely be controlled