Neighbors

Neighbors

On the floor above, a man drops something heavy,
or a gun fires, and you can barely hear it except
for the muted bark, the slight tremble of the wall
you feel inside your fingertips, the hardness
hiding amidst softness, the ripple in your coffee.

The girl sitting next to you looks up,
and you are amazed, because you are also looking up,
and what you both feel is the same concealed mixture
of wonder and fear that disappears
a second later like a lost memory.

Upstairs, something is said about the moon,
about its blackness, how it stares like a stranger
lit by the starlight, but what was said is drowned
out by the sound of a man's heel, bearing down
on the spot where someone else once stood,

and who now calls out to him, from very far away.