it gives cause to wonder, how i forget where i am sometimes, nestled amidst tall buildings and this is the city. were i to walk a short way, i would see this. lights, late night strollers, possibly feeling as i do, alive and living inside of something too big. eyes can not focus on this place in its entirety. only when flying in during the darker hours have i been able to grasp what it is to be, here, surrounded. utterly surrounded.
glancing through the barely open window, my eyes are drawn to a flickering television set in some higher up place. i stare, watch jumping pictures, wondering if it is a video game of some sort, or maybe just a movie, an animated television program. it is too flashy to be human, i think.
it is not the television or the lights or any of these little things that throw me. i guess, i am not really so thrown at all but, i do wonder if anyone can see into this little apartment, which feels like my own, when i'm alone here. if anyone can see the faint glow of a tiny vaio, if they wonder what i am doing here. perhaps, were i to assume this were any sort of 'upscale' neighbourhood, or, more appropriately, a really /bored/ neighbourhood, i'd wonder if there were some sort of high tech binocular-like device aimed right at my text. if they could read each word as it falls from my fingertips but...
why not take it further? (everyone always takes it further in their heads, anyway, whether it is known to others or not, matters little.)
perched atop the tallest building on this cool spring evening is a tired old man. his arthritic hands are resting lightly in his lap and he is breathing low, slow, soft. (i love this old man, in my head, mostly for what he will do for me, in this moment.) he tilts his head and drinks in night sounds, a little startled but mostly used to the cars, if nothing else. he thinks of me. the girl typing whatever might wander across her thought tracks. he loves me, too, the way i exist and think, the way i have taken on this observant role, at least to a point. sometimes he sits in parks and tries to watch the leaves falling with young eyes, but his time for that passed. he'd had little want then, to watch anything that interests him now.
he will envy me, and i him, irony heavy in the air. two little humans, entangled and apart, without real knowledge of the other, aside from hope, a realistic dream of sorts. both wishing only to be the other. learning everything and nothing, smiling that it is possible to know anyone you wish to create in your universe.
truthfully, i've a feeling the sky is full of dying stars, tonight, i can see them crying little sparks of light as they fall from higher than my old man, any of us.. they are a small comfort in this dark city night. |
