The face in the window
Much like a small moon,
Pitted and reflecting
The light from my lamp,
Wanes at the cheery brightness of eating.
It shrinks at the slurps and all of the clinking.
It wanes in the blooming laughter of two,
And shrinks to a point at a circle of three.
It hides at the edge of the crosshatched window,
At the bottom right, unblinking, right on the brink
Of my periphery, just so.
It lingers.
The moon-face rests its fingers
And clatters—No! It’s just the oak tree,
Just a branch, they say, and return to the game
Ignoring that the cat watches
The window, and the golf ball-sized face in the corner.
And soon they all say, ‘hurray,’ and ‘good times,’
And trot out the door to their cars and they drive
Away, and I am still here.
It waits.
I do not look,
But I wash the dishes, and it waxes. It grows,
Its gaze drags on my shoulders, its pitted eyes longing—
Longing for what? —What could it want?
Best not to think, best not to wonder,
For it rises in the window to the very top corner,
The more that I shudder and tremble and stiffen
My neck so that I do not look—no! Don’t look!
And I turn off the lights one by one,
Dreading the last at the top of the stair,
Across from the window. Something clatters.
The cat scatters!
And I fall down the stairs,
And keep my eyes open wide.
I watch a show about baking all night,
Where they talk about fondant and sweet kinds of cream,
And I do not dream.
I do not dream.