i heard my neighbor sneeze
i remember the last time i went to a zoo i saw
a chimpanzee at the back corner of the enclosure and i stood in
the stale air under dim lighting listening to children laughing,
pointing, the spotlight illuminating his face
with an expression i could feel. maybe i was projecting.
i wondered how much he understood
of his container-dom, if he knew what lay between us
this cruel barrier encasing knowledge from something more, hiding
in darkness. pointing fingers. eyes watching.
he scratched his armpit and the children around me giggled
but of course he wouldn't know, we were so close but
he was in a different world.
the lights are out. in my apartment
thin drywall and dim comfort feign my solitude until
i hear my neighbor sneeze through the wall.
the clarity of his voice crawls up my
back as it dawns on me that i was a creature
in glass all this time, enclosed into a private
exhibit of which my neighbor was my audience
and I his, to his sneeze and his other expressions,
just as he heard all of my cries made in my glass solitude.
i am terrified.
nowhere am i safe, even at home i am
in a zoo, the laughing audience just outside of my
cognition no different from that
chimpanzee. he must be tired. i am tired.
i feel deeply isolated yet relentlessly observed
and i wish to break the wall or fill it up entirely–
or maybe what i need is to hide, just once,
under something impenetrable enough to blanket me
warm and hidden in the shade of a night's sleep
purely my own.