They are people you don't recognize
even though they're in your address book.
All those names and numbers that are strange to you
even though you try to remember them.

People who work on rooftops will never admit it,
but they know
the sky is not blue,
they can hear the murmur of flags with samurai stars
when they face into the wind.
People who work on rooftops, these people know
true vertigo.
People who work on rooftops could not
work at a nightclub or within the walls of a café.
The gesture they make
when they suspect a loose shingle suggests
they might have been teachers
of a hesitant tango
in another life not so long ago.

People who work on rooftops avoid rush hour
and mobs,
as if crowds and buses and the smell of leukemia and the words too much
weighed too much,
might press the world down through cracks in the mud.
People who work on rooftops do not trust
even the empty streets at five in the morning,
and the rare times they alight,
before they leave the sidewalk and step on the crosswalk,
they first test it with one foot,
test the hardness of the asphalt,
fearing that this frozen river
might crack beneath their feet.