morningtime.

across the street, i am making a new friend. he's roughly seventy-two, has a dog that is too old to have puppies. we will always be friends, because he is the first person who sees me in the morning. 

lately, i have been going into work very very early, which is strangely satisfying without soft drinks and breakfast and other people, besides myself, my old-man neighbor and his old-man dog.  sometimes i wave, but mostly i smile at him and smirk at his dog. i wonder if it affects them in the same way. on the days that i wave, he waves back with one or two fingers. not all. it is much too early for that. it is then that i wonder what his voice sounded like when he was young like i am. if it was raspy, like a late night radio dj or baritone like a pulpit preacher. i wonder if there are words that make him nervous the way that "ointment" and "moist" make me shudder. i wonder if he says "commode" rather than toilet, if he has many geriatric tendencies at all. 

my new friend always wears white. he either has one morning shirt or many morning shirts that all look the same. either way, i am SURE his friends never give him a hard time about it. old people hate change, don't they? his wife maybe turns him away from bed if he's not wearing white, saying, "I don't know you in purple!"

in the mornings, because he's always pulling the same weeds out of the same flower bed, with the same ribcaged-dog, it makes me excited for the day--about all of the things that will go as smoothly as the day before, all of the events that will replay themselves, all of the people i will get to love again. this is the foundation of my day.  i always forget to thank him or speak, even.