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I walk into my living room, the television is on; there is a part of me that remembers turning it off,
I always do, but there is also the part of me that forgets. There is something on the news about past
findings in a project called the Human Genome Project, a project that started in 1989 in an attempt
to identify and map the many genes in the human genome.

These sorts of things, the human condition, they interest me, so I sit down to watch, but
unfortunately that part of the news is ending and once again I find myself watching news about the
violence in this city.

Two children, both girls, were victims to a drive-by shooting. The reporter says the shooting more
than likely has a relation to the thirteen bodies found earlier this month in an abandoned apartment
building, but there is no concrete evidence. Regardless, the police department is furious and has
snapped due to the many recent homicides; who wants a higher murder count? The random arrests
and police brutality will start soon. Max out the jail cells.

I'm at the bus stop now, waiting for a bus to take me to a department store where I can buy a new
shelf for a few hundred homeless composition notebooks. The bus, unlike some other things,
eventually comes after such a long time of waiting and takes me to my destination, which is also
unlike some other things.

Along the way to the department store, I see black and whites, a name for police vehicles, and they
are all over the place. If only the police department had the funds and the man and woman power to
do this every hour of every day, crime might move to another city in another state that doesn't have
the funds.

Walking through a neighborhood, I see a lot of kids playing in clothes that don't quite fit them
right, playing with balls that don't quite bounce properly. Sitting on the steps are the older kids who
have seen and done a bit more than the kids who will survive them. The kids who will succeed
them. Shouting from the windows of the apartment buildings are the mothers, who are yelling at
the little ones to come inside, or to not play too close to the street.

The fathers, they are probably either gone, or too busy working all day, every day, which also
means gone as well. Then there are the kids who don't have a mother to be shouted at by, because
their mom is a single parent trying to make ends meet. I think of Lynne and her two children, what
it would be like if they lived here. I wonder if there was ever a time that they actually did.

At the department store I order a new shelf, a better shelf, and they say they will deliver it within
three business days. The night falls and I get on a bus that takes me in a different direction, and I'm
finally back home.

As I'm entering the apartment building, I look down at Lynne's flowers, and then up at the Moon
that looks as if it's giving its light to these flowers. These flowers, growing in darkness, they
remind me of my feelings for Lynne, and then I tell myself that the light from the Moon is coming
from the light from the Sun.