Balcony Hours
My balcony faces someone else's kitchen.
Their fights, their laundry
drying like flags,
a whole life I'll never know
the details of.
We've never spoken.
but I know when they're sad -
the lights stay off longer than usual.
I know when they're okay -
I can hear their TV
through the open air between us.
Nobody says this part out loud:
Balconies aren't about being alone.
they're about being alone
next to everyone.
A whole street,
standing in their own rectangle of sky,
performing solitude
in front of each other.
I've never met the woman two floors down
who waters her plants
the exact same time I show up
with my cold cup of something.
But some evenings
it feels like the whole building
is quietly checking on itself,
one balcony at a time.
I think that's what I come out here for.
Not the view. Not the air.
The proof that everyone else
is also standing somwhere,
holding their own version of tired,
close enough to touch -
and choosing, instead,
to just exist in parallel.
We're not lonely.
We're just doing it
at the same time,
in different rooms
that happen to share a sky.
