Hermitage

I keep the windows closed so no one can see me looking out of them tracking my corner of the world by sound instead, the trains passing by in the night with screeches that leave me tense and waiting for crashes that never come, car doors slamming and greetings as neighbors come and go to work or welcome friends, the ambient brightness of other peoples' porch lights (never mine) occasional sirens, garbage trucks, all the shrieking thuds of the industrial warehouses across the tracks I keep time by the roar of airplanes on approach, by the flicker of streetlamps, by the morning and the evening commute as they track across the sky of my awareness, now sunrise, now sunset, now the deepest of midnight, now three in the morning when it's finally safe to walk outside and breathe and mark the winds