Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Proof by lamp, proof by stumble


A-stumble back from a bar, watching my feet to see if they make a straight line.

A lamp lit in a window is proof of another life. Someone else's existence.

Feet stretched onto a stool, the glow of a television. Maybe she's watching Seinfeld reruns. Or some law/cop drama. Maybe she got some shitty news. A break up. A lump. Maybe there's a stack of bills next to her chair and not enough to cover them.

Maybe she's just stumbled home a few minutes before me, unexcited by hook-up prospects, and she's just nuked some mac and cheese or pizza that lived in the fridge. Maybe her beer buzz has her contemplating trips to the mountains where dudes will be hotter and smarter and pizza will taste better at altitude with legs sore from hiking.

Or maybe she sits on her couch, scribbling in a notebook about the guy that just wandered by her window, on the street at closing time; proof of another life, proof against the one a.m. existential aloneness.

Proof by a lamp lit in a house. Proof by the stumble of a passer-by.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love "night windows". I love the glow of warm golden light from a lamp lit in the window. Something about it I can't explain, but it's comforting. Now, in reading your blog, I think I understand.

StripeyMouse said...

love this - i often do the same when walking past peoples' windows