It Blazes Everywhere

We walk down streets
stuffed with houses, rows and rows
of terraced twins, symmetrical like
paper chain dolls, uniform brick brothers
squatting shoulder to shoulder, glued wall to wall,
their chimneys standing at attention.

Their open windows pass us by
and we glimpse their yellow insides, warm and alive-
a student hunched on his desk,
a family eating dinner,
a cello in the corner,
a cat on the sill. The houses spread
their yards to us, too, the little squares
laid like patterned napkins.
One is spilling lavender and daisies to the street,
while another is already crammed with Christmas,
its lime green lights glowing in the fading day.
You point, delighted, at a bench on a porch,
missing from the park some days ago.

There is a fat man smoking
at his gate, nodding at us.
The window behind him is dark and still.
I smile and he says, "You're quite the pair, aren't ya"
and goes inside.

We laugh and link arms and you
smell like lavender and plant daisies in my hair and we
head home with my hand hot in your pocket,
leaving the staring houses behind us
with smoke rising from their chimneys.