No man of the crowd.

Every night I share a cigarette with my neighbor.
They live two houses in front and three across,
and in the darkness we see each other light up.
Sharing a cough or a wheeze, and a kind of knowledge
that we’re both aware of the other,
though neither of us need to acknowledge the company.
Me on my 2nd story concrete veranda, looking over them,
from my house left over from a bygone decade,
all concrete and spider-webbed stucco
with a large shed and offstreet parking,
A house lucky to have escaped a wrecking ball
while all the other ones in the neighborhood were taken down.
They, on their small wooden deck
in their new one story house,
that sits two in front and three across from mine.
All fiber-cement board and treated pine.
A home designed for yet another minimum wage worker,
or struggling, single mother.
The two of us have never met or even shared a solitary word.
I don’t know their name, or even what sex they are,
since the darkness masks them completely,
and I cannot make out features
in the rhythmic, ruddy glow of their cigarette.
Yet, I feel more akin to them
than some people I’ve known for years.
I just can’t seem to stop myself feeling an affinity.
Knowing that they share some kind of trait with me,
a kind of comparable nightly ritual
or at least simply sharing the same schedule.
It makes me feel better about things.
In a time where everyone feels a need to
constantly share, and update,
and to have some sort of daily discourse about their lives;
that to simply, quietly share surroundings with a stranger,
with no obligations or even commitment to be there,
is simply amazing.