by Kahlen Ryba

Created on: January 23, 2007   Last Updated: May 20, 2007

His Feet Keep Moving...

I lean out the window into the cool breeze
smoke my cigarette
look at the sky
I look at the house across the way.
A light turns on in the window directly across from mine.
Did someone once look for that light?
wait for that whisper or the dimness of a face to appear?
a young girl in the home of her parents in the '20s,
meeting in a secret rendezvous with her lover next door?

The light turns off and I puff my cigarette.
I see his feet moving across the kitchen floor downstairs.
I can see them in the reflection in the window next door.
The water is running.
He is doing dishes.
His jean pant legs are hiked up
as they always are when he's cleaning.
His feet move fast, with decision, with purpose.
They make me want to work harder, move faster, love better.
I ash my cigarette and lean out the window again to smoke it.
Outside, with the light from my bedroom glowing out,
it looks the color as it does when I am finished with euphoria.
It has often surprised me how I'd missed that before.
How beautiful the world is without it.
I see a plane moving across the sky
and think how I will be on one in a matter of hours.
I stroke the sweet soul beside me,
his fur soft and his face sadly sweet.
I knew it.
He would be mopping.
His jeans were rolled up.
I told you.
I smile as I see his feet moving across the floor atop a paper towel
mopping up the extra water from his mopping.
Mopping his mopping.
I keep waiting for his footsteps to come up the stairs
but they never do.
His feet keep moving in the reflection of the window across the way.
His feet keep working.
and I keep looking out the window at them.
I light another cigarette.

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