The Man Who Lives Upstairs

There's a man who lives above us
And he's never been awake
He sleepwalks across our ceiling
And knocks on his own door
And leaves empty cans outside
Strewn along the driveway
With melted candles inside them

The man who lives upstairs
Breaks glasses every night
Then we hear a tapping sound
Then cold water pours through the pipes
And bubbles up in our sink
Pours out of our shower
And stains the faucets

We smell stale bread
We taste it on our tongues
And try to wash it away
With wine and french toast
But it never works

We taste it when we hear him
Sleepwalking across the floor

Sometimes in the night
We'll wake up to the sound of a church bell
The smallest church bell you can imagine
Ringing just inside our closet

I get up to open the door
And before I can
The knob turns
And the bell stops
But the door pops open anyway

And I close it
And go back to bed

Pictures fall off the walls
And when we pick them up
They're different

People are missing in them
We're missing in them

Family photos
And photos of us
On vacations and trips

Become pictures of empty beaches
And isolated monuments

Where did we go
We wonder

Our refrigerator is warm to the touch
And heats up all our food
Until we can smell it burning
As soon as we walk in the door

The windows fog up
When it's sunny and warm out
So that we can never look out
And no one can see in

The man who lives upstairs
Sends notes to us
By leaving them
In our mail slot

He writes them while he sleeps
So they describe his dreams

The fog
The bells
The burning food

We crumple up the notes
And throw them in the garbage
Yet somehow they fall out of whatever book we're reading
And land in our laps
While we're reading in bed

We hear him dragging his feet
On the blue and green carpet
Just like the one we have
With all the same spots

We hear him crawl into his corners
And rock back and forth
Slow, then fast, then stop
Wailing into his walls
Hoping they soak up his tears

We break out into cold sweats
As soon as we think of going to him
So instead we repaint our walls
But the salt still comes through
Falling into little pillars at our feet

The man who lives upstairs
Doesn't need our help
He knows what lives inside our cupboards
And how deep beneath the sheets we have to hide
To feel safely locked away

We hear him cry
And we look at each other
Too awake
Much too awake

And one of us coughs
And the other strokes the car keys
And we wonder...

How did the man upstairs wind up there?
And how did we get down here?

And the only thing different
Between him and us
Is that we're an us
And he's the man who lives upstairs