Aubade

Below the viaduct, the 5:05's stiff wind snares
the whole block in its backlash, and although
the morning fairly aches with promise, only
insomniacs are out, the million-dollar dreamers
orphaned by love's chameleon reversals.
What joins me to my neighbor is this

silent complicity: by flashlight I uproot
dandelions and crabgrass, while on his fire escape
he does calisthenics. A month ago he came home
to an empty flat and that emptiness turns
its dull blade inside his chest. Caught by the last
anemic sickle of moon, perhaps he thinks himself

more than half a man, but less than full.
This early the street's washed black and white,
jittery as a sixteen-millimeter reel. It's easy
to understand, at times like this, the sudden
desire to commend oneself into the hands
of sympathetic strangers who, in certain

transfiguring lights, wear the faces of husbands
and wives. And then there's the edgy allure
of the dangerous ones--that red-haired cashier
with an emerald piercing her nostril's flare,
or the carnival boy who tends the shooting booth--
those blind ducks with rings painted round

their necks. This business of being human
should not be such a lonely proposition. Maybe
I should drop my spade and stride
to my neighbor's alley, call out, It is I,
the one for whom you have been waiting.
Come down. Let us join our forces. Yes,

a brash tarantella through fireweed, the shattered
bottle glass. But I am not so bold, not nearly
so presuming. Instead I note the snail's
slimy progress and my neighbor touches toes
until the fog rolls down the hill like a memory
that wants losing. He performs deep knee bends

until he strikes a contract with himself
that gets him through his day, a deal not unlike
the one between earth and root, between
green pear and empty hand. My neighbor
crawls back through his window, the landing
sways its vacant iron grid, and above

the plummeting alley, a sleek gray seam of sky.
Pretty soon deals will go down all over the city.
The fruit vendor will appear singing strawberries
and watermelons. From their tanks, lobsters
in the seafood markets will wave pincers as if
imploring the broken factory clock that registers

9:99 in the morning, 0° even in the heart of summer.
Answer me. What am I to make of these signs?
- Lynda Hull, Collected Poems, 2006

As this is a love poem to a stranger (among other things), and I have been guilty of loving strangers, this poem tugs hard at all sorts of my sensibilities. I used to know it by heart, but I lost my copy of this book (Of all the books I could've lost, this one, oh, this one!) the night me and Avi sat in the hallway until 5am, coming to the conclusion that we should join our forces.

I'm anxious for summer to end, and with it, social limbo. Solitude is making me stagnate something awful. I need people to hang out with to shake me out of myself.