Rooftop

The white, the bright, the ever-blinding light
Cuts through these almost night–time sights and sounds I hear and see
Sat on tiles and staring past the trees
The warmth that makes a house a home radiates up my rooftop perch
It stops the chill of winter getting to my bones, and so I sit and search
I search up top, to the quick and readily reddening sky
I search down low, to the houses lain amongst where grass is dry
As I search, I question halos and the dead
Question what life is and the end
The point of bitterness and friends
And though I don't know what I search for on this house atop a hill
The city shows by lighting what happens when the day is swallowed up and killed

The people down below are ants
Living in their stone and metal hive to feed their queen of industry
Oh, how I hope that's never me
I see them living out of matchbox cars that blow forward in the breeze of time to create history
As famous ants that rose from nothing just to dissolve back to nothing in their sleep
I watch this grey expanse of city
And I think of something witty
To sustain my brain, so I can sleep all undisturbed and unperturbed
Until the morning comes to take my pulse and drain the ulcer of responsibility
Questioning life as it questions me

An old ant climbs up scaffolding
Battling his aging frame
Until he sits upon the rooftop where the carving bears his name
He spots old remembered features
The skylight arcs out of the tiled frame
Like it wasn't quite meant to be there
Oh, no he never meant for it to be there

And though the white, the bright, the ever-blinding light
Cuts through these almost daytime sights and sounds he hears and sees
Sat on tiles and staring past the trees
This old man is me, breathing in the home I miss dearly
No one lives here now, so it's just me, myself, and a rooftop in the trees