Tiny Windows

I see people as stories. It's an affliction really, because it always leaves me with the feeling that I need to write something down about everyone I meet. Some small detail to memorialize that I brushed against another human being. What follows are what I call my tiny windows. They are bits and snippets, limited to no more than fifty words, that I have written about some of you. I don't know how many or how often I'll share them. Of course, I will never tell who's who. I doubt that anyone would recognize themselves in my writing anyhow. I suspect that we see ourselves more clearly in writings about others than in the writings that truly have to do with us. Some of these are based in truth and some are my own imaginings as to what lies beyond what I get to see here. But they are all stories I have seen when I looked at you.


No one would ever guess, but she frequently hides in the ladies’ room stall and cries. She weeps from the unfamiliar joy of being loved so much. She walks each day through aisles of books and memorizes the soft curves of her lover like a prayer—like an answered prayer.


He often sits in the dark. He’s married. Sometimes he looks at his wife and imagines her vanishing, growing transparent until she disappears completely. He loves her desperately, but once in a while he wishes she were gone forever. She smiles at him and he forgets what he was thinking.


She craves attention. Her husband leaves for a board meeting. She mixes a tall screwdriver and begins to write. Her virtual life is a saga of constant catastrophe and despair—always one step away from homelessness, insanity, or death. In truth, she is the president of the local Junior League.


You are so goddamn fat and ugly. Who would ever want to be with such a fucking loser? His father screamed it at him every day for years. He eventually began to believe it. Since his father died, he screams it at himself every night in the mirror before bed.

Five

She is a dark-eyed awkward stick of a woman, full of razor sharp edges and soft druidic magic. In winter, she breathes against the air and imagines it to be dragon’s breath. She longs to live in a world where whispers carried along the fog can put people to sleep.


He is mildly in love with six women and one man. He will never admit it, but it is the man who intrigues him most. The women are married. He flirts shamelessly with all six. He imagines kissing the man quite often, but has never said a word to him.


A moment of perfect blissful satisfaction came to her as she pressed her smudged smiling face against the muscled neck of her best mare. This is what my life smells like, she thought, breathing deeply of muddy wet grass, saddle blanket, her own sweat, sweet oats and sunset.


She will put on her favorite jeans and frayed overcoat. She will go for a walk, as was her habit before her life began to take on a life of its own, before it left her feeling caught in a net. She will go for a walk and never return.


He was one that would find the black spot on every golden apple. It was the spot, rather than the glittering fruit, that always lost him the race. He never knew the joy of running. He plodded along, picking up apples, immediately tossing them aside once he observed a blemish.

Four

She smells of sour milk and baby powder. Her hands are rough from too much housework and not enough lotion. She takes care of everyone else. Sometimes she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror and remembers that she also exists. She sees that she is a beautiful lioness.


He was quite clever and he loved sex. He had a young trophy wife who would lunch with her friends on his dime. She would laugh behind his back and tell stories of an old troll who imagined himself to be king when she placed his cock in her mouth.


Stares. Giggles. She is Travis Bickle. You talking to me? Are you talking to me? People are easily cowed into looking away. She wants rockabilly guns tattooed onto her forearms, and a girlfriend that looks like Betty Grable. She is fierce in the way that all wounded wild things are.


His eyes were gray, lead and sky swirled together. He was taller when you got up close, like a movie star in reverse. The more you knew about him, the bigger than life he seemed. He never raised his voice in his whole life to anyone, not even once.