Barbed Wire Photograph

The girl across the way became your friend

You watched her from your window as she played piano

Imagining the chords through the sleet and grey of January

Almost glad you couldn’t hear.

She stayed up like you did

Sporadically

Keeping strange hours

You’d light a candle on the sill

And she would follow suit.

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Sometimes you’d both just sit

Mindlessly

Throwing pebbles at the fence between you

that dissolved before they hit the glass

Sparks of barbed wire in the moonlight.

And if you’d never spoken there was no need for shame

So you stared at her

She stared at you

Observing and absorbing.

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You could have opened the window

But you never did

So neither did she.

was it vice versa?

Except that one time

When you came home from a school that felt like hell

And saw the curtains twisting in the wind.

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there were no more candles after that.