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About This Poem
WINDOWS
The fishbowl beckons, nightly.
Irony, really, since I live in one.
Yet the windows call,
Framed drama, lives displayed.
A gray man smokes, endlessly,
his butt drones silent
words and from here I can see
dread in his wife’s head shake.
A TV, flickering, casts
shadows of loneliness. Floors
of strangers, faces all familiar,
but indifference keeps
neighbors across dim hallways.
The highrise is aging, there are
frail rust lines on each
balcony railing. Even the moon
crumbles over time. In the city
days disappear like
rent checks, complete privacy
and secrets. A widower works
out as though he
can run through the thick walls.
A single mom paces, phone to
her ear and her son
bounces a small, green ball to
hide himself. No one expects
the drunk on the
tenth floor to jump. They had
heard the arguments, but still
as we looked at truth,
and witnessed heart’s fragility,
each of us shattered with his body.
*Based on a true event.
A man jumped from the tenth floor in the apartment building
across from mine. The event was kept out of the media.
I was later told that his wife had left him that morning.
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