Waste land

My neighbor has pale curtains. They are decorated with small, brown flowers or pictures of plants, or maybe even hearts.

I’m at home and I watch my neighbor, who is burning lights in her home as she sits by the window. I’d like to think she’s like me. Maybe she looks down here and thinks that I am lonely too, and burn my lights because of that.

Darkness makes the loneliness tangible. I don’t like it, the darkness. It seems to have a life of its own and breathes in through the pane; it reminds me of my father. He has a heavy breath, like barren, muddy spring ground.

I don’t often think of him—unless it’s springtime.

I think also of a poet, whose name has escaped me, who talked about April in one of his poems. I remember thinking once that my father is a bit like that poem. Or maybe my father is like April, and that poem reminds me of his heavy respiration that smells like April’s land.

Maybe it’s only the title.

I don’t know nor do I remember.

As a matter of fact, I no longer read poetry. I haven’t since my school. I’m such a busy woman and I have no time for poems, nor anything else. Though, at evenings I watch my TV and forget I burn the lights so that the darkness couldn’t get inside.

I don’t want it in me. That’s the reason I always sleep the lights on, excluding summer’s time. And the spring is too bright and too hard. It reminds me only of the winter, snow, and the rides my father took me on as a child. And now I recall my father and his cold hands. He always said that the thought of snow is a comforting one.

It covers all.

But, then comes April and melts the frost and ice, I think as I stare through the darkness at my neighbor, who still sits by her window and looks through brown hearts.

Maybe she too thinks of April and its shattered, stained land.

Maybe she too thinks of the poem that reminds me of my dad.

And then, I turn around.