past my apartment late
at night,
it isn't the loneliness
or isolation
I'm afraid of,
but the way it can start
to feel friendly,
even intimate—
like I know in my mind
this is not
the same wind
but I feel in my bones
that it is
the same kind:
some prototypical melody line,
mundane yet familiar
alluring but dissonant,
being sounded in the dark
with intent
to beguile me
just an octave apart
on the same pipe-
like instrument.
