Somebody is watching from the far side of the street,
I have clocked him three consecutive days in the same heat
of afternoon, same corner, same arrangement of his posture,
a man-shaped fact that every explanation fails to foster.
I checked the windows twice and got the double-bolt installed,
I mapped the sightlines from his corner to mine, called
nobody because nobody would hear it as a threat,
they would hear anxiety, they would offer me a cigarette.
The watcher does not move until he thinks I have looked away,
the watcher was there yesterday and he is back today,
I do not know what he is cataloguing from across the street,
but I know the observation schedule has been complete.
He is not there every hour, I tracked the pattern and it is not
a surveillance operation, it is too casual, too caught
in position without visible transition, as though
he materializes at the corner and then lets go
when the light or timing shifts and I look out again,
and the corner is empty but the empty corner does not explain
the certainty I carry that the watching has not stopped,
that it simply moved to angles that my tracking has not dropped.
I considered that it is me, that I constructed a surveyor
from the raw material of a man who smokes beside his neighbor,
that I assembled evidence from coincidence of presence,
I considered it and laid it beside the other lessons
I learned about the way perception fills in what it needs,
but the watcher was there at seven this morning in the weeds
of early light, and he looked up exactly when I checked,
and the certainty that settled in my gut was absolute.