She coughs in the dark, light leaking through the slightly
opened door from the hall where a stair rises to the roof while another
descends into the depths of a building dim with worn steps and nightly voices.
The old building is polished and painted, so you almost do
not see the cracks or wear, splinters on the banister smoothed over by coats so
thick they inflate the wood and keep fingers from being poked when people rise.
She sits on the sill blowing smoke out the window at the
religious vista below, street lamps setting to light bits and pieces of
brightly colored children’s toys the deep shadows dampen.
She is alone – even when people are with her – glow of the
cigarette, sad laugh emitted with each puff of smoke.
There is music, but it is almost always inside her head,
songs past and present, but so rarely future, as if the metronome stops each
times she thinks of tomorrow or has already stopped and what she hears are
merely echoes of what once was.
On this night, no mood shows through the thickening clouds,
but the drip of rain drops plots on the sill outside, one slap after another;
as she drums the tips of her fingers on the still dry inside sill.
She is waiting for something that might never come.
Someone perhaps.
A sole event she has only a partial vision of, but never
clear enough to count on, never detailed enough to predict.
No comments:
Post a Comment