Poems about balcony

The summer I interned in New York, I fell in love with someone I'd only seen from a balcony window.

I'd fallen in love with strangers before, on buses and in lines, watching their shoulders straighten and their faces grimace in half-sunlight. I fell in love with these people the way you could fall in love with a poem, finding personality in the way that their eyes flicker nervously from left to right, tiny instances where their stanzas throw you into a daze. But this time was different. For once, I wished to know a stranger without the brim of my sunglasses, for once I felt something when I knew I'd never see him again.

His apartment was cluttered, bottles of water and the empty cans of energy drinks piled in a corner where a conscious person would have fit them in a bin. There were clothes on the floor, and although I knew his high rise box was laid out just as mine, he must have used the expected closet space for something else - his clothes were everywhere, crumpled in heaps on the floor that were too erratically placed to not have some sort of lingering system. Posters of people were taped to the wall, covering the matte eggshell white, edges falling occasionally to show signs that he wouldn't always live there. I hoped that if he ever owned a home, that those staring portraits would be stapled or pasted thick to his walls, just because he would be the sort of person who wouldn't change his mind about what he liked or what he wanted.

I would watch him from the same eggshell white room of mine, with nothing on the walls and not a scrap of anything on the floor. From my blow up mattress to my suitcase of clothes, kitchen stocked of single servings and a solitary set of dishware. I had no curtains and no carpets, no television or pictures of friends huddled in an unexpected embrace. For all anyone knew, I could have been squatting. I would look out at him from the window spanning the entire north facing wall, aware that if he ever looked out, if his eyes ever darted south, he would see me cross legged on the tiled marble floor, hovering over an overheated laptop and cardboard coffee.

I would get home at seven forty-five, shower in the New York water that tasted like dust and gin, and towel off, walking to the balcony. He, just like I, had a long, narrow balcony spanning about four feet on the right edge of his loft, and I would lean on the edge of the concrete slab, smelling the foul city air, taxi music floating from the lumpy yellow marsh below. That was when he would unlock his door suddenly, sometime between eight and eight-ten. He would step with his entire body and move into his crowded room and stand still for a moment, as if to collect himself; restrain from tearing faces off the walls and pummeling fabric into the floor. Sometimes he'd shut the door closed with a twitch of his foot, untying the half apron around his waist with one hand and pulling the red tie strapped flat onto a black dress shirt loose with the other. Once, he did all that in succession and proceeded to slide against the shut door until he hit the ground, falling into himself like a dropped jack's ladder and rubbing his fingers from his jawline to his eyes, up into his hair and back over.

But most of the time, he would just force off his shoes, never untying the laces, and move to the balcony just as I did. He would go out to the balcony too, but he would always keep going, moving to sit on the edge of the short wall, socked feet dangling over the city. His legs would be splayed wide, hands placed right in front of him, flat on the ledge. He would look down at the golden sea below, and when he was done with it, spit a flickering cigarette into the glittering bank.

He would also smoke when he woke up. He got up at six, like clockwork, and would stumble back out into the smogged pilot's seat in a plaid bathrobe, hazy faced and staring down. I don't think he was ever late. He would get dressed slowly and fix himself in the mirror for a good half hour at the left of his room, until finally turning around just to watch the door for a moment. Sometimes I could swear that he watched for so long that he must have thought it would up and race away.

He slept with the lights on. He never came home late. He didn't go out at night, never blundered in at two in the morning with a lithe model girl, long hair framing icicle eyes. On weekends he would sleep all day, rising every few hours to go back on the edge of his balcony and smoke. He would stare at the faces on his walls, the callouses on his palms, the murmur below; but never, ever at the empty loft across the way, dotted with a blue plastic bed and a speck of a person.

I left New York in September, on a red eye flight vastly cheaper than the rest. I put my toothbrush and toothpaste into the front pocket of my luggage, squeezed the air out of my mattress, and left. I hadn't left a trace in that home of mine, and it didn't leave any on me either. When I left New York, I felt nothing. It was almost like I had never set foot in the city, forgetting to socialize with the locals the way someone could leave their hat at a bar.

I never knew if the man across the canyon hated coming home to a loft like I did. I wondered if it bothered him too, the lack of walls or rooms to compartmentalize the space. I wondered if he didn't like to eat at home, if he felt sick when he watched the sunrise. I wondered if when he looked at the tidepooled city, if he also saw salvation. If he wondered every day from eight to eight-ten about what a dangly thing of a human would seem like to the loft across if it was spit from the edge of a narrow, four foot balcony.

O beautiful star with the crimson mouth!
O moon with the brows of gold!
Rise up, rise up, from the odorous south!
And light for my love her way,
Lest her little feet should stray
On the windy hill and the wold!
O beautiful star with the crimson mouth!
O moon with the brows of gold!

O ship that shakes on the desolate sea!
O ship with the wet, white sail!
Put in, put in, to the port to me!
For my love and I would go
To the land where the daffodils blow
In the heart of a violet dale!
O ship that shakes on the desolate sea!
O ship with the wet, white sail!

O rapturous bird with the low, sweet note!
O bird that sits on the spray!
Sing on, sing on, from your soft brown throat!
And my love in her little bed
Will listen, and lift her head
From the pillow, and come my way!
O rapturous bird with the low, sweet note!
O bird that sits on the spray!

O blossom that hangs in the tremulous air!
O blossom with lips of snow!
Come down, come down, for my love to wear!
You will die on her head in a crown,
You will die in a fold of her gown,
To her little light heart you will go!
O blossom that hangs in the tremulous air!
O blossom with lips of snow!

The squirrels below jump across the grass
Like they know there are serial killers behind them.
And I know it's far down
But I feel like I'm already standing on the ground.
Man, my legs are too short to put up
On the plastic chair in front.
And I know it's far down
But I feel like spinning 'round and 'round and
'round.
My rusty needles poke through
The green spots on my turquoise yarn.
And I'm waiting for a car passing by to stop
And point up
And say "Look at that girl. What's she doing? ".
And I'm not sure if my mother is still asleep
Or if my father has come home from work,
My sister's home from the salon,
My brother's home from the gym
And they're all just waiting to be seated
Or for me to be dead.
And my yarn looks like it's slowly disappearing
But I still need a hat for my head.

I am humbled by the things I have yet to learn, and even more, embrace. I believe that there are certain aspects of life that we refuse to see clearly, we try so hard to fool ourselves, and try even harder to concede their existence. Realism has romanticized anonymity. And, surprisingly, I find myself romanticizing realism.

I think people, when it comes to getting to know another person, focus too much on the individual. We tend to magnify our differences, or maybe the opposite, we get so caught up with affinity. We dance with playful ideas and get disappointed when they do not live up to them. Trying so hard to figure them out, trying to catch up with the years they have already put behind. I could never catch up. That is truth and beauty. That is peace and war. That is pain and love. That is you and me, and we are relative.

I have got to know so much people in my life. I have been disappointed one too many times. But not with them, more with myself.

Allowing yourself to welcome a person shouldn't be about them, or who they are. We are all dissimilar. Being vulnerable allows you to get to know who you are when you are with them, and that is who you should judge to like or detest. If your parallelism keeps you awake, then you should decide if you are liking the person you are becoming, and that is detrimental when choosing to be with that person for the next days of your life. I wouldn't want to sleep my days away.

No matter how hard you try, you will always fall short. No matter how hard you try, people will only allow you to believe what they try so hard to believe themselves to be. Reality is relative to perception.

I surprise myself sometimes, and that's what keeps me searching. Not just for love, but for that deeper love I have yet for myself. That goes for you and me, and we are relative,

And that is all.

The words made of pixels sent from palm to palm never felt so sweet.

Longing for the touch of another's presence reminiscing the night air.

Let me skip Moon rocks on the stars outside my window to let you know I'm here.

Let me paint you a picture with every Shooting star.

Minutes and miles that's all they are.

Obstacles and static interference.

Benny was on the balcony
Outside the flat. You wondered
If your father had passed him there
And what he may have said.

You closed the front door
Behind you. "Did my dad
Pass by you? " you said.

"Yes, " Benny said,
"just a few minutes ago. "

You looked at him
With his brown quiff of hair
And patterned jumper.

"What did he say? "
You asked.

Benny smiled.
"Asked where
I was going with you. "

You moved next to him.
"What did you say? "
You said.

"Said we were going
To clean up Dodge City, "
He said.

You wondered if he had.
"What did he say? "

Benny looked over
The balcony
At the Square below.
"He said nothing
Just raised an eyebrow
And smiled. "

You found it hard
To imagine
Your father smiling.

You watched the coalman
Bring his horse drawn
Coalwagon
Into the area
Right below.

You wondered
If your father
Had smiled.
You guessed
You'd never know.

This flowered grove looks,
A grand bouquet from above
Storks, quiet, dozing

Intricate black iron fences,
Chained in from turbulent ambulation
Below.
Streetcar bells,
Dim drunken singers pavement level.
Room for two,
Crystal cut wine glasses filled
To the brim, Merlot hospitality.
Our faces illuminated by warm orange
From lighters and city glow.
Your rosy hands,
Bitten by the cold and
Connect the dots between my knuckles.
He speaks in sapphire symphonies,
Grins with ash stained lips.
Only rays of violet radiate between
Two charcoal smeared thumb prints.