From her balcony,
late night,
loud and unsteady
in her heels,
she protests the prices
of plum tomatoes,
feta cheese, and
the Pinot noir she
drinks from a
deeply bowled
viridian glass.
The only answer
to her punctured
complaints
is the shimmering
mirrored clamor
of our wind chimes
and the endless
murmur of our
sleepless dream city.
“One thing is clear,”
she surmises,
her silk red dress
like a flag of warning
raised in the night,
“God doesn’t care.”
She lifts her glass
and cries proclamations
of rebellion against
staid commitments,
and decries all hardships
to be tricks of light.
“All lovers are cheaters,
as they have always been,
as they will always be.
I accept! I accept it!”
She empties her glass,
cocks her arm,
and throws the glass.
In the pause before
the pop and shatter
ten floors below,
we make desperate
promises of faith
to each other, declare
our deepest love
for each other,
reassure each other
that our neighbor’s truth
about God and love
is not our own.
“And everything has a price,”
she screams, perhaps
reaching a crescendo.
She waives her arms now as if
the denizens of South Beach
have risen as an orchestra
she conducts into a symphony
of her emptying heart.
Lower now, and finally
bellowed from the depths,
propelled from her lips,
“Always know the past
comes back, always
with his hand out
for what you owe.”
Her voice carries
over the rooftops
toward the horizon
at four in the morning
from the edge
of her balcony
and suspends our spin
toward the sun
for just that bit of time
we’ll soon forget.
Image from Flickr.com.
