Fire Escape

From the fire escape I watch cars between buildings a block away. I watch a man shake hands with and hug another. I watch a cat, hidden between garbage cans, watching a squirrel. I watch clouds slowly pass over the city and the sun arc across the sky. Another long drag from the cigarette, exhale and I watch the smoke curl and twist through the hot spring air. All a part of this moment. All a part of me.

This moment will pass, and in the next I will be in my apartment, on my bed, watching the light dim as the day dies over hours. In that moment I will lay still. Unseen and unknown and surrounded entirely by ghosts. The dead you. The dead me. The dead then. The dead there. I will lay still in the dark and the ghosts will press and push and climb into me, filling me, biting. I will lay still in the dark and my neighbors downstairs will begin a meal on the stove and wash their dishes. They will go online and talk to their living ghosts and loves and noone. They will clean their bathroom and consider lighting candles and taking a bath. They will spend a beautiful evening of nothing and soon forget it ever happened and I will lay still in the dark above them and hope to sleep.

Here though, now, another drag and from somewhere I can hear a man shouting. I can hear the low thrum of bass somewhere else. I close my eyes and I can hear birds in the still greening trees and the wind between the branches. Cars endlessly pouring through the streets and all of their cacophony. A city alive in front of me, all around me, and, for now, a part of me. For now, I am a part of it.