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The White Skirt
For an hour he wonders what the
girl could be thinking
as she sits in the green armchair with her head slightly lowered,
her thick red hair slightly falling forward.
She has unbuttoned her white blouse
and her breasts hang loosely in the halter of her slip.
The man watches from the balcony
of an apartment next door
strings of Christmas lights dangle between palm trees.
Through the open French Windows,
the man considers how the girl stares at some spot on the floor
to the right of her red slippers,
the elaborate folds of her white skirt.
Next to him, a neighbor complains
that his wife and children don't love him,
while inside the man watches his own wife dancing with their host:
one fat hand massaging the small of her back.
The man would like to go home,
but senses the emptiness of his house waiting for him.
Now he notices how the girl's
bare arms
hang loosely over the arms of her chair,
that her whole body is limp as if she had been dancing all night;
as if her lover had just left her to move to another city;
as if in the knowledge of her beauty,
she bears the knowledge
of her own mortality which at
last fall across
whatever she may be doing in the way a curtain can
fall across a sunlit window.
The man again considers how silent
his own house must be,
like the silence inside an empty suitcase
or empty suit of clothing.
Abruptly, he stands up,
leaves the apartment without speaking to his wife.
He feels his life invading him, slipping past
like a puff of air between open fingers.
Once outside he seeks out the lights of the girl's window,
sees the lights of the party he just left.
Down the street,
he sees the darkness of his house.
He wants to knock at the girl's door,
find the words to change their lives.
Then he pauses.
For every action he can imagine taking,
he imagines reasons for not taking it;
for every grain,
he imagines all the losses.
He takes a few steps toward
the girl's building, then a few
steps back.
It's the dance he's become best at.
Gnawing and arguing at himself,
he remains standing
as lights blink out
in the windows around him,
until his wife finds him
and without speaking grips his arm,
draws him down to his own dark home.
© Harley
Harley
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