from dusk to dawn

When the sun is out, I see you on your balcony — you, the wrinkly lady in the threadbare night dress worn throughout the day, hanging clothes on a drying rack. The man on the phone, smoking cigarettes with a bit of belly peeking out beneath your white undershirt. The girl who sunbathes in an aqua blue bikini on weekdays, much to the envy of our surrounding neighbours.

It’s night time now, much too late for children to be awake. The light from my apartment is keeping the whole street up. Is that a lamp I see switch on, now, at 2am, with a shadow hunched over the chair? Is that you, puffing away on a sheesha pipe into the wee hours? There’s no smoke. No, you must be reading, too. You must be writing, too. But surely you can’t see the words on your page in that dimness. You must be awake for some reason, too. It’s bright. I’m not alone tonight.

No. Wait. I’m wrong. That’s the glass door of your balcony, blackened. And the yellow light is nothing more than the reflection of my wide-awake apartment on yours. And that shadow? The sheesha base standing tall?

As dawn sneaks up the front of the building opposite mine, I see that it is merely clothes piled high on a chair, and the sheesha is a pink shirt on a hanger strung from the clothes drying rack.

It’s alright, I will wait for you to wake up. I am watching.

Dawn has come and a doorway opens on cue.