Second floor (II)

I can see the TV again, flickering darkly. He has stepped out onto his patio for a cigarette. The ash end flares orange into the midnight parking lot. He must see the little lamp in the window of my office nook and the shape of my head, but I don’t think he can tell I am looking at him. Truthfully, I’m not certain that he is looking up at me. So perhaps we have been staring at each other curiously unconscious of self. Never acknowledging with wave or nod the seconds that we shared in silence. Never betraying awareness of the other’s presence. But maybe he, like me, gloats over a few stolen glimmers of a human across the pre-autumn evening.