Hedgehog Thoughts

The day seems long the night longer waiting in treacle time, oozing hours drip molasses minutes, toffee apple sticky seconds. The peculator coffee hisses as I sit reading the newpaper, the mechanical clock strikes midnight in heavy chimes that drag night, spawning morn in fevered uncertainty, the dense jade air sounds almost silent as I look into darkness... yet a faint secret noise noses its way outside, rustling close, as I empty bins in blackness, the torch freezes a ball of prickly protected flesh but a delicate pink nose protrudes, each flecked quill shimmers when the ray's amber eye highlights its shade of brown and ebony, I pick up a shed quill as I return, the moonlight silvers my desk and hand. I ink the jet eyes shining from secret fur, see the soft tender paw prints pressing on paper imagine the barely perceptible progress of words on velum, I sense the rich aroma of stale bread, the moist soil between toes, my warm underbelly beneath a canopy of sharp spikes, the clock has stopped dawn passes in a moment pop paper into the desk's dark burrow, buried deep within then move limbs from the wooden seat, shaking pins and needles from a dead leg crawl to bed alone, and sleep