the view

anyway, where i am now is like that one club downtown with the floor-to-ceiling windows
wrapped all around the room; a very flattering dress of skyline no human could compete with.
i could look out and practically touch it. everything sprawled out and tiny, moving along
at ant's speed and glimmering with our various nightlights, this city that never wants to go to bed--
i can see everything for this moment. behind me and ahead there are people and places 
that tomorrow i will not be able to imagine or remember this acutely. too much detail to process
really, but tonight i am just looking, and the lights are on and we are dancing and the view
is not of darkness but of simple night, which is different. charged with energy. not over yet.

behind me she stands a little too close, not quite able to breathe down my neck
but that's never been her style. instead she shines in the periphery and i can't keep my eyes
from slipping back to her. tonight though, i'm winning: she's a bright light 
in a big city. i can almost believe she's not enough to stand out.

ahead of me, the new lights: my own among them. and a possibility.
i should be dancing, i could be dancing, but sometimes all i can do
is watch. taking it all in is something i can handle without shattering.

i'd like someone to walk me to the windows and point out everything:
here is the street where you will work your favourite job. here is the apartment you
will live in just before you leave the city. here is an alley you should never go into.
here is the bar where you will meet them. 

all this view and no map, the classic anxieties hooking clammy hands around my elbow,
reminding me that all these windows don't exempt me from the door,
from tomorrow, from the reality of walking out into that city and finding out all the 
horrible and great and devastating and miraculous things that are waiting for me. that could send me back up here
or worse places in a year or two years or however long the trajectory takes with the big things. (like her.)

i wish someone could press their finger against the glass and mark out where i belong, exactly.