Long-Distance

Tonight, my neighbor starts sobbing again, screaming at his distant
love. He curses resourcefully, 

sending each syllable up like balloons. I stand on the porch, 
shrouded in my bathrobe, while he calls her, 

Bonnie, along with every name in his book of love and rage, until 
he sank down on the curb and began to cry, 

bony chest heaving. She comes out to the balcony. Tells him to go away. 
Some nights, she lets him up, only to send him

out packing again.  How strange is, in my bare feet, feeling for him
and Bonnie, despite their inevitable

—probably healthy—collapse. As I try not to imagine him throwing 
a trashcan through her window, 

what breaks through instead is sadness; you, a once-close male friend, 
whom I loved for your hidden 

glimpses of shining kindness. There were three A.M. phone calls; 
you could nurse me back to laughter. 

Then, some silly fight put a sudden, silent stop to our talking—a rift, 
I now barely recall; something about you 

telling me to open my eyes: Some men are always scanning the horizon 
in search of something better 

than the women before them, which stuck me in a tender place 
I didn’t know I had, if only because I didn’t want to see 

my man at the time was always looking. But that was then. And you were trying 
to warn me, to which I slammed down 

my phone like a tiny door, refusing to listen. As my neighbor continues 
screaming, shrill as a girl, he might as well be anyone 

and proof that maybe some guys never say the right words, no matter 
how they love you, and some women

may not answer or hear, but my lord, is he ever trying. Makes me wish 
we could talk, even if it releases what steams inside each other. 

If there's one thing I realize, it’s that tonight, if you’re awake, I am too, and finally 
ready to listen.