The sun doesn’t set on this side of the building,
but I can tell when the pink air is heavier than usual.
The hearts of the apartments across the street start to glow like
 stage bulbs, orange after the lights dimmed
 in effigy behind the scenes.

Everything outside my window fades around the ocher exterior
 in a filtered vignette.
The building, alive for seconds sucks my breath
 with the hope of never looking away and
 reminds me of my own fragility.

One summer when I was a kid
 I introduced a basketball to a bay window,
 and it shattered in the same way.
A thousand shards, naked in the afternoon.
Blinking with astounded expectation
 that let me in on a thousand secrets about
 the passage of time.
Years later, I learned that
 there is only one secret about time,
 and all those fractured eyes on me.

I was terrified of my potential.
Forced into existence with the
fright of possibilities.
Time versus potential,
means endless equations that made me hate math,
and through a thousand glasses
dancing the ground, I watched myself
alive in each one with my back against the wall.

Tonight, I’m staring out a window,
wondering what else I could be doing,
and in terrible love with everything I’ve seen.