Sounds

There were evenings when you could hear - way off - tugboats signaling to each other with short blasts from their horn as they pushed and nudged a ship into port. Or the rumble and clang of hatches closing over cavernous holds at the end of a night shift. And occasionally a siren wailing as if some unfathomable grief was being hauled raw and naked along indifferent streets. Then all would contract to whispers and scratchings on the walls of a fevered brain as if someone or something was trying to get in, held back by a breathless pause to magnify and be given a name, lest squeezed shapeless through the narrow opening of an ear to fester and inflame.