Voyeur

Last night
I glimpsed your silhouette
amongst red-hot orange and mauve

across a chasm
across our Hof

I did not avert
my eyes
Why didnt I?

You were chopping the air
with your fingers
so I turned off the kitchen light
and just sat there

at first I thought you were a mute (now you are my muse)
making hand signs
maybe to your mother, to your brother
or to your lover

my two eyes peered,
glinting as the distant stars and Mars above,
or maybe Venus? they peered
through a window,
the void between us
and then another window.

for a moment you were gone,
just a block of orange
and mauve
surrounded by the darkness
of the Hof.

then you returned
a shadow holding something
white to
wipe away your tears..


it was a conflict beneath the chandelier
a silent piece in c-minor
a portrait framed in jet-black ebony
mirrored in a curious symmetry
by another neighbour in the floor below
dining calmly in a cold, fluorescent glow.

stricken i sat there
a voyeur
both remorseful, the tiles were really cold
yet grateful,
for the (admittedly ethically-dubious, borderline, if not downright, creepy)
inclusion into your private intimacy
like reading a page in your dearest diary.

and though you did not know it
you were not alone,
I felt your pain
as you took a drag from
a floating orange dot.

And so I dare to hope, when I am weepy
If I ever feel alone
that I am not.

Also sorry for being creepy.