The streetlight outside my apartment has started a rhythm. Three short, one long. I didn't notice it for the longest time because who watches a streetlight. Then I was awake at 3am for the fourth night in a row and there it was, doing it again, and I counted along without meaning to. Three short. One long. Three short. One long. Wind doesn't keep time. Rain doesn't keep time. A failing ballast flickers, it doesn't tap.
I told myself it was the power grid. Substations pulse, I read that somewhere, they breathe electricity in cycles. That explained the three shorts. It did not explain the long. The long is patient in a way machinery isn't. It waits. It lets the dark sit there a beat longer than the rest, like it's considering continuing, like it's deciding whether I'm worth the next round. I started leaving the blinds open so I could see it when it did it, and that was a mistake, because now I'm sure it knows which window is mine.
Two weeks in, the rhythm changed. It added a fifth beat. Soft, almost off, like an afterthought, like a word you almost say out loud and swallow. Three short, one long, and then the small one, the one that shouldn't be there. The night it appeared, my kettle boiled at 3:14 with no one near it. The night after, my phone lit up on the nightstand displaying a single character I don't have on my keyboard. I didn't touch it. It dimmed on its own, in time with the long.
I'm writing this at 3am again. The light is doing three short, one long, and the small one, and then it stops and just stays lit, solid, pointing straight at my window, and I understand now that it was never a rhythm. It was a sentence. And it has been waiting for me to learn how to read it. I think tonight I finally do.