Girl in the Purple Window

I’ve seen you somewhere…

I don’t tell them

it’s from the window on main street:

the one that

blooms in

electric violet petals from a

faded brick wall;

that one with the brown tin sill and the word

N E O N

carved into it…

scratched out in

capital letters

by some previous tenant before

the girl in the purple window.

The girl from the overcrowded apartment

in the slums of that old town people only dare name

under their breath

between sirs

and ma’ams

and church.

You know the town,

the apartment,

the girl.

Everybody does.

The girl with the dead flowers in her window

and a bottle of Windex.

The bitch in the window

who keeps fighting with her boyfriend

and calling the cops on her dad.

Old beer smells and the dog that doesn’t stop barking

and the cat that yawns from behind the curtain.

Dusk captured in a frame…

Twilight that never settles into night, or

brightens into day;

a moon and sun who never show,

but gaze at one another in the bouncing reflection

of a purple pane.

Until that divine sky escaped its box

remembered it was boundless

and took the girl with her.

Where have you been?

Exploring pink sunsets, she says…

I say.

I try to forget about being

the girl in the purple window.