You shake gently

You shake gently. The night is moon warmed and orange skied. You are pulled and pulled slightly from all around, from hidden places and your immediate surroundings, from far before and from this moment. The pull of the morning ocean rolling back from the shore and the chaos of light and breath tug limply from hundreds of glimmering points and you hang in the balance. The devious symmetries of sleep hold you almost just where you are, but do not keep you from shivering. The glints of the sun on the sea find you here where you find the freezing green of fluorescent kitchen window lights telegraphed into your cubby. What your eyes saw and your hands touched and the still air you breathed from all of the days apartments, grows outward from you in both directions, act and consequence, the crushing symmetries of guilt paralyse your body in the open center of the lit universe.

You cast long shadows that reach down byways and twist around corners. The shadows carry silent charges about your character, your facelessness, and when it settles, far out of the alcove with its green light, in a vast empty parking lot surrounded by the back bedroom windows of all the night apartments, its shivering perimeter rattles far and wide in exaggerated panic. She peers through the tiny hole where the cord of her window blinds passes through a slat. She closes one eye and unfocuses the other, sees your shadow, and steps back from the blinds, her silhouette diffusing into lightness.

Your fingerprints stipple you all the way back to the beach in tiny craters of sand far above the tide line where she could still see them if she walked down to the beach in the morning. You ran your hands through your hair and you touched her cold window glass. Your fingerprints left on glass, saliva on your fingers and on plastic silverware and on the shop window. You did not leave any papers or notes or forget to collect any. There you have left a trail of cleanliness that she could discern. You lay still, unprotected, across your whole fitfull trail. From her window she can see it all, into every pore, across dirt sand and oil landscapes, and through time and consquences, reaching back and reaching in beneath her feet, unsuspecting, weary, beleaguered, alert, and unprotected.


Critical Response:

« | »