There’s a girl in apartment 12B
who’s carved out a space so sad and silent
it echoes like the hollow of a tired moon.
.
How do I know?
she never looks at me,
never square in the face.
her eyes glide past like I’m
some miserable dog,
a mouse scurrying under the fridge.
when she does look,
it’s a quick blink,
a flinch of light snapping off—
as if her lashes could erase me,
make me vanish like old smoke
that hangs too long in a cheap bar.
.
We pass on the stairs sometimes,
she rushing down from her kingdom on twelve,
me crawling up from the depths of three.
three\'s my lucky number,
which is a joke,
because luck left me behind
when the city swallowed me whole.
.
Sundays, I see her in her clean, neat armor,
a white bible tucked in her arms
like a newborn she doesn\'t trust the world to hold.
.
She moves like Sunday mornings belong to her,
and maybe they do.
I wonder what church takes her in,
where she sits on a wooden pew,
whispering her prayers while I rot
on the other side of town
with a beer and no god to listen.
Sometimes I think I’ll follow her,
find her church, sit in the back,
and let her God see me,
just once, just enough
to call me lucky.
.
I think she wears a small cross
on her neck,
slender and pale like something
painted in winter.
but I’m not sure,
because I’ve never been close enough
to know if the cross is gold, silver,
or just imagined.
.
I pray sometimes—
not for me, but for her—
for her to look at me
just once,
with a kindness that doesn’t
slam the door in my face.
.
I pray she’ll slow down
on the stairs,
won’t pull her coat tight like I’m the cold,
won’t blink so fast like I’m the nightmare.
.
Maybe I’ll save enough,
move up to twelve,
get an apartment with a view
of the same city that chewed us both up.
Maybe I’ll meet her in the basement,
in the laundry room,
both of us waiting for the machine
to stop spinning.
.
Maybe then,
in that damp quiet,
I’ll say hello,
and she’ll blink slow,
not to erase me,
but to let me stay.
.
But maybe not.
maybe I’ll stay here on three,
watch her on the stairs,
and let my prayers
go unanswered.
that’s the kind of luck
I’m used to.
.
© R Gordon Zyne