Pages of Yesterday

Abeyance

I’m sitting here on roof 49

I’ve had time to number them all

Between the bristles cleansing

The ashen slate

Groaning under my feet

I cradle the broom in my broken arms

swinging my feet beneath the gutters

That bend at the slightest flurries of winter

That hold gritty rain water and fragments of leaves

I finger my sunken trouser legs

Accidentally painting the threads with grime

So thick that my hands leave no imprint

The sun is boiling by the edge of my face

And the roof is caving beneath my weariness

The rays coax me to sleep

And I am falling

I am tangoing with this girl

Who used to live adjacent to roof 49

I would hunger for her silhouette behind venetian blinds

Her hair tickled her backside whenever she moved

 she would watch me watching her

Her opaque eyes, translucent to me

The way she peeked at me

teasing me like only a woman can

I never spoke to her, and after a year she moved

I don’t know where, I don’t know why

I see her face behind those curtains

feel her hair tickling my backside

Every day I’ve been on this roof, twenty years since

The blinds obstructed my view of her tango