Lacemakers

To You, Next Door

13 To฀You,฀Next฀Door I hear your water pipes early, their occasional knocking some comfort in that hour before light. Weekends, the bump of a vacuum cleaner against our wall—our wall, neighbor. Sitting close to it, I imagine it evaporates— our lives mirror floor plans. Our identical gray doors, the peepholes’ one-way gaze. Do you wander vague rooms, feeling the urgency of wanting, and not wanting, everything? During an electrical storm, the sky all violet ruptures, I lean against the balcony wall, the one that divides us. You’re there. I hear your shoe scrape something dry like dead leaves— no doubt the same the heat sends off the birches here at my own door. Soon, I can’t hear anything but rain on the carports, wind’s intense static tearing the trees and I want to call someone, hold my phone to the storm so we both feel our smallness in it. Years ago, my friend and I fell into the lawn while gusts spun leaves in the Carolina poplars and the trees’ limbs heaved. 14 We owned every choice ahead and its tributaries, all its riverbeds. Neighbor, it was a childhood ignorant of many things: separations, compromise, even lightning like the flare you must have seen just now, there, beyond the power plant. Or this one: an X-ray on lighted glass. These matches, struck repeatedly without igniting. ...