Random Thoughts
With the possibility he gets caught up–a secret world, a broken bookcase, a minor key or a house key or, sometimes, it seems that he’s detached, elaborate but unfeeling.
Or, the sun has no right to rise in a world like this– he’d liken it to tape loops but she wouldn’t care, and he’s looking for caring.
So he’s reduced to Polaroids–pictures of things he finds touching–her asleep on the couch, her mittens on a chair, her hair close up, her drinking water, her chewing her nails, her taking a candy from a dish, her tying her shoes–but, more often, they’re out the window, of girls walking dogs and lights in buildings and passing cars and the mailman and squirrels and lampposts and bikers and kids holding their parents hands and moonlight on a puddle.
The rules were set down somewhere in those stacks of catalogs and letters on the table just inside the door. So he takes a picture of them and doesn’t tell her. He doesn’t tell her that he’s known about her secret life as a disconnected girl, a bubble on a string or a sad sonnet or a note to a friend that he keeps rereading.
He’s always waiting for the mailman. He’s always waiting to go out so he can take pictures of other people.
