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Description
I have a friend who never leaves the house.
Not for a hate of the world, yet the house is her world,
her entire life fits in it.
She's smart, could have been successful.
Streetwise at that, even isolated from streets.

We sank into the couch, watching the news mindlessly.
I always get wrapped up in sitcoms, news, anything with good characters,
but I look away when it gets gory.
My friend can watch war footage on a full stomach,
watch the outside.  She still turns off the TV
when I start to get sick from the sound, even as I hide my eyes.

She always tells me that I'm too attached, that I love
what is not a part of my life.  She says that I can't possibly take up the whole
world in my heart, that it
would burst from the pressure--
She is down-to-earth.  She stops me
when I start showing signs of overzealous care--

I imagine her outside, if she wouldn't collapse.  We meet
in an empty park, sometime warm;
she's explaining that we change based on the things we surround ourselves with:
look around, she says.  I see a lot of trees.
Some squirrels, raccoons, park benches bending with age
like ancient stooping bald men--
Then I wonder about her; she is
pulling shut a cage door that surrounds us all--

In the apartment, we stand side by side, gazing out the window;
cars pass every so often down the obscure avenue.
It's this nexus that boggles me, the point
where she's at ease with community, with life.
My friend glances back at the television; quiet, it sizzles with static.
She's always removing herself from horror, from war, the corruption
that brings us into its maw.
The world outside sleeps.  It's a strange thing, standing in front of this window,
everything we dread at peace for one night, hiding
its fangs, the moment dead save for the faraway whistler--
it's this silence we both love.
The silence of death is an outburst of wonder.

Description
I have a friend who never leaves the house.
Not for a hate of the world, yet the house is her world,
her entire life fits in it.
She's smart, could have been successful.
Streetwise at that, even isolated from streets.

We sank into the couch, watching the news mindlessly.
I always get wrapped up in sitcoms, news, anything with good characters,
but I look away when it gets gory.
My friend can watch war footage on a full stomach,
watch the outside.  She still turns off the TV
when I start to get sick from the sound, even as I hide my eyes.

She always tells me that I'm too attached, that I love
what is not a part of my life.  She says that I can't possibly take up the whole
world in my heart, that it
would burst from the pressure--
She is down-to-earth.  She stops me
when I start showing signs of overzealous care--

I imagine her outside, if she wouldn't collapse.  We meet
in an empty park, sometime warm;
she's explaining that we change based on the things we surround ourselves with:
look around, she says.  I see a lot of trees.
Some squirrels, raccoons, park benches bending with age
like ancient stooping bald men--
Then I wonder about her; she is
pulling shut a cage door that surrounds us all--

In the apartment, we stand side by side, gazing out the window;
cars pass every so often down the obscure avenue.
It's this nexus that boggles me, the point
where she's at ease with community, with life.
My friend glances back at the television; quiet, it sizzles with static.
She's always removing herself from horror, from war, the corruption
that brings us into its maw.
The world outside sleeps.  It's a strange thing, standing in front of this window,
everything we dread at peace for one night, hiding
its fangs, the moment dead save for the faraway whistler--
it's this silence we both love.
The silence of death is an outburst of wonder.