Early

It started in November. 5:15, then 5:00.
His body dragged him from the sheets
as though a debt had just come due.

He made the coffee. Drove to work. Found a parking space
he'd never seen open before — front row, in the shade.

A twenty in his jacket. He was certain it wasn't his.
A meeting canceled just before the part where he'd be wrong.

By Christmas he was setting alarms for 4 AM.
The raise came through without him asking. Debts began to thin.

He found a ring at the gas station, real gold, still warm,
as if the hand that wore it had only just dissolved.

His neighbor's dog stopped barking. Traffic opened clean.
A woman at the grocery store gave him her place in line

and looked away before he could.

He didn't ask. He set the alarm for three.

At three the streets were different. Not empty — occupied
by people moving with a kind of patient, quiet work.

A man on Elm checked meters with no uniform.
A woman sat in a parked car writing numbers in a book.

They nodded when he passed. The way you nod at someone
who has finally shown up to a shift you didn't post.

He found things daily now. Watches. Wallets. Foreclosure
notices torn in half, the better halves still warm.

His boss retired early. Nobody applied but him.
He moved into the corner office like a key into a lock.

Two o'clock. He stopped pretending it was insomnia.
Heavy in the hand the way a thing is heavy

when it was never meant for you.

A sprinkler ran on Aycock Street. December.
Somewhere a car door closed with a clarity

that belonged to a different distance,
and the quiet after it was not silence

but the sound of something else listening.

One morning one night, standing at his kitchen sink
running water over a glass he'd already cleaned,

at an hour the clock had no honest name for,
he watched a woman cross his lawn and take something

from his mailbox, casual as a neighbor borrowing sugar.
His neighbor's dog sat at her heel and did not bark.

He couldn't stop. Because sleep was where
they'd take it back — the parking space,

the ring, the raise, the door — and he pressed
his face against the kitchen glass,

the cold fog of his breath opening and closing
where his reflection floated over their bodies

moving through his yard, his street, his life,
his face laid over theirs like a transparency,

and some of them were watching back.