The Close

My world is narrowing: small occurrences haunt the moments. I count the number of sparrows at my bird feeder; The language of significance grows louder. The dead are my neighbors, three, four, six times removed. The living fret over the mail, but the ones I barely knew, sit out front smoking cigarettes in the rain. As regular as street signs, they appear, the passing and the past away, some still linger in this small suburban close, here at the end of the road it feels okay to be tucked away.