A Backward Serenade

Someone plays the accordion from a lighted window as I hurry down the street. It is a warm glow from the windows in the buildings but the night is covered in florescent drops of moonlight. Light rain. My face turns toward the sky and the sad sound echoes off the wet pavement and floats in the cool air like smoke from cigarettes. Strangling, exhausting. The accordion breathes and hums from the balcony and I stop to look up; a backward serenade.

I showed him my work once and he said it was beautiful. We slid through galleries and stood among the paintings, living statues. He had been in love with someone else so i could never love him. Love? We didn't hold hands but we made them jealous because we seemed intimate. Were we?

"How interesting," a woman says as she stares. We stand still. Skin and bones, skin and bones and hair like gauze. Did I follow him here, but fate would have it otherwise? I find my life inverted, things aren't always what they seem. Is the fairy tale even happily ever after? We pause for a moment in time. We own mars, the sky, the ocean; earth is already claimed.

I have all the depth of a tea cup.