Regarding Perspective

Depending on where you stand
you see a woman with a small dog,
a red leather boot, the heel of the boot,
or the dirt on the boot.
My freshly-washed blue dress
hangs in the window, obscures
the garbage cans, the dead
Sunday street.  Forgotten ones
dangle from ropes, a portrait
of useless feet.

Now would be the time, I write,
to invent a more beautiful
handwriting, round strokes
with arching domes--a beautiful
script to describe people
more beautiful than we are.

I am the one writing
and you are the one who reads.
The hand leads you 
to an unknown wide field
where every word is a lie 
and then again not.
If you had come, you'd have asked,
What do you do?

Perhaps I'd have walked away,
turned, explained, 
I am writing a poem.
A poem in which people leave
and paper stays
and curls against your fingers
like an old polaroid.

You took a picture that day,
but never showed it to me,
I didn't ask.  Perhaps 
I wasn't as beautiful 
as I had hoped in front 
of the mirror or you had imagined
at home.  Our kisses slipped
off our lips.  You talked
of one-family houses, two children,
one wife, half-joking, like a soap
bubble you tried to tack 
to your skin.  I laughed, 
was astonished, didn't dare to speak,
although in the silence 
there was talk of me.

Depending on where I look
I see trees, patient like Job,
unable to leave.