Cigarette Break: a “Poem”

The pregnant Mexican woman sweeps up cigarette butts from the sidewalk of the bank building.

I turn away.

A woman sits eating a sandwich.

The woman stares always out at the street. Never making eye contact — or indeed any contact.

Now she looks at her sandwich, as she delicately takes a bite.

Then, back at the street, chewing without interest.

She seems completely indifferent to the world around her — not self-absorbed, just… content. She simply exists. Here. Herself. Eating her sandwich.

Not worried about who might be watching her. Not fixing her hair, or crossing her legs a certain way. Not pretending not to notice other people, but really not noticing them.

While not exactly young, she is spectacularly beautiful — in a meek and unpretentious way. So far from ostentatious or vain that it is hard to tell if she even knows she is beautiful.

I can’t stop staring at her.

I worry that she’ll look over — and think “who is that sick freak staring at me?…”

But she does not.

She never looks at me. Or at anyone.

She is simply a Venus, sitting alone, contentedly eating a sandwich, enjoying the breeze, and the relative calm of the summer day…

But, then again, she might just be a stuck-up bitch.

THE END.

(But, then, I should really just shut my bloody trap. Shouldn’t I.)