Triste

she sits alone on the hotel balcony, looking out at the city, chin on knees, arms hugging legs, compacting herself into a hush. but the stillness hides movements. within her eyes water glides slowly in, laps her retinas, borrows what it finds there, recedes, carries it in to sea. the quiet water drifts what she sees to distant shores washed by indigo tides, around lonely atolls, into disenchanted lagoons, and finally back again, returning it, sodden with a long-neglected disappointment, to the brown eyes, along with a tinge of blue.