Window Dressing

Sometimes, I rested my head on the pillow and I went down the rabbit hole wondering whether you liked me or not, not like that, but just in general, as another addition to the human race.  And I looked out the window, staring at the brick and mortars across the way, counting the lights, first vertically, then horizontally, getting frustrated all the while about why the sides of buildings aren't set up like with solid metropolitan grids.  There was no symmetry and between the hours of one and four in the morning, I found this to be particularly upsetting.

Last night, I saw a girl in one of the windows.  I'm not sure how old she was but she had blonde hair that was certainly not blonde at birth and she was sitting on a furry stool in front of a vanity.  There was nothing specifically interesting or different about her except I was intrigued by her willingness to sit there, with nothing in hand, and stare at herself in the mirror.  She wasn't brushing her hair or doing her makeup.  There were no props for whatever propensities she may have had.  So I started counting the minutes and I got all the way to 49 when I realized that my counting was futile.  She had probably been sitting there for quite awhile before catching my eye and I was disappointed in myself for not catching that reality sooner.

When I was finally ready to retire, I set my alarm, for another 49 minutes, just to see if she was sitting there.  Maybe she was dead.  No, there was no way that dead weight could sit upright like that.  Right?  Right.  This was the shit that was going through my mind in my bed.  It had been many Moons and Suns since someone was in here next to me and I had gotten so that I preferred it like this.  Me, my blanket, and a mind full of insecurities that would plague me until I was too tired to care.

After waking at 3:44AM, I turned over and there she was.  She was still there.  All lights on.  Eyes closed now.  Maybe she was about to climb into her bed.  There was a bed in there, behind that furry little stool of hers.  But she didn't move.  Another 12 minutes went by and nothing.  The lights started flickering in there but no blinking.  Nothing.

I could not figure this girl out.  She sure as hell looked like she was breathing.  She wasn't blue in the face.  I had good enough vision that I could see her lips weren't blue and there didn't seem to be any signs of distress, or if there were, there was a lack of willingness to address them.

I had never in my life seen this lack of urgency.

So I listened.  I put my head out my window, in the long, hot, stale air that resided between us, and I stared at her.

And at that precise moment, she moved her right index finger to the back of her next.  Not to scratch it, just to pat down the hairs that stood right up.  She shivered a bit, but there was no wind in this corridor.  Nothing.  And since her window was open like mine, I imagined she didn't have the air running.  She was an odd bird.

An odd bird who turned right around and looked at me.  Again, no blinking.  Nothing.

She just knew.

And so did I.

So I went back to my bed and turned my head the other way, away from the moonlight, and what would certainly be the sunrise.