Personification at Midnight; or, What Do Sirens Have To Do With Me?

Not long after the sirens have passed by, my street gets very quiet, quieter than before, a quietness that’s made peace with sleep. And then, only a moment or two later, it’s as if quietness has completely changed its mind, suddenly in the business of being hyperactively alive, shaking each sleeper awake.

Somewhere nearby, birds were once playing in a small pond. The sound of the sirens reached them from a distance; the sound felt completely frozen over to me, the kind of silence a bird would fly south from, staying as far away from winter as possible.