The Boy Who Lives Next Door

everything I've ever written these pieces of torn paper in my hand all this has only ever been an ode to my silence not for the boy who lives next door who smiles at me sometimes in the corridor who comes over in the middle of the day to ask for a spoonful of sugar or honey who sometimes plays his guitar louder when he knows I'm awake next door who peers from his balcony to check if the lights went off here too and then grinning sheepishly comes home to offer me a candle who stops the lift for me and then pretends like he didn't but slowly smiles to himself and I smile too and in our silent acknowledgement of each other's smiles that my poems are an ode to that silence not to the boy who lives next door