i’ll always remember it as late afternoon…

i’ll always remember it as late afternoon…

i’m sitting in the living room, not living, just sitting, but warm. the heat from my body and the thermosate raised up to seventy three, and it’s snowing and i can see it from my cushion. the television is off but i can see my reflection outlined in black i’m leaning over, my legs spread apart, a green towel wrapped around my pale body i’m not caring enough to hold closed, my left side falling out of the top, i was never a modest girl and i’ve grown wise to this notion as a woman, a black towel on my head and two fingers raised up lightly brushing the right side of my lips, holding the postition like i should be smoking a cigar, like i should be dragged off in a little black dress and pearls to some hollywood party, and i’m thinking to myself how marvelous to look almost picturesque on this january day. my eyes are bright and the lightest green, a shade they turn only after they’ve grazed steam and i seem as though i should be from a play, with a french butler standing next to me, getting ready to paint my toenails or powder my shoulders. a throwback to the good old days and the only person i even long to see is a boy who’s too far away from me for his own good, and for my own liking. a boy who writes me letters detailing our aspired future, a boy who taps my interest with lines like
“talking to you is terrificly intoxicating just hearing you laugh and spill on with your anecdotes and hear the little noises you make when you complain and everything.”
and i wish to thank him for loving me even in those moments of complete misery, those moments where i want to jump through phone lines and cross state boarders to jump on his lap and show him my appreciation. he, the responsible one, the one who makes me want to drink tea and eat crumpets, to put on little white gloves and tuck my hair in a bun, and to curtsey on request. one who sends me books, who i can smell on the pages and his addiction in the binding. one who is off living these mid-afternoons dreams they only talk about in famed biographies and true hollywood stories, from the fourties or from the fifites..

and there i was in a little green towel talking only of fantasies.