There is a window...

       There is a window on the seventh floor where a writer sits and stares. His seat is sidled up close to the wall, where he can rest his arm and his coffee on the windowsill. Beside his hand is a simple black pen which sits quietly as he smokes his cigarette, waiting patiently to be picked back up. He is staring slightly downwards, towards the building across the street.

       On the fifth floor of an apartment building, a lady sits quietly at her patio, smoking cigarettes. She comes out there often, sometimes wearing jeans and flat-bottomed sneakers, sometimes in soft green pajama bottoms and a tank top, breasts hanging just low enough to betray the bra that she's not wearing. On the weekends she wears a dress, though not necessarily heels.
       Everyday the writer watches her. He writes long stories about her day, her life, and how she always seems to smoke her cigarettes in exactly the same way, no matter what she's wearing. Sometimes he fantasizes about the two of them together and how, when she sits up in bed next to him, her breasts hang just like they do underneath that tank top.
       As the writer is brewing coffee one morning, he looks out his window to see her sitting there, green pajamas and bare feet. He notes how she had never smoked her cigarette quite like she is on that particular morning. He too sits down with a cigarette, letting the image of her jump his pen to paper. He thinks that maybe today he will go over and offer her coffee. And then the glass door slides open, and a man walks onto her patio with two coffees, putting them down beside her and leaning in for a kiss. The writer watches the way she throws her arms around the man, how her hair falls back from her face, and how she arches her back just the way he'd imagined her. Then he looks away. Trying his best not to look, he stares at the paper. But nothing comes to fill it up.
       Across the street, on the 9th floor is a woman who sits quietly on her patio, reading her book, and smoking a cigarette. From time to time she laughs to herself, or makes another cup of coffee, or smiles. From time to time, as she reads her book and smokes her cigarettes, she glances downward and across the way, where a writer sits gazing out his window. She imagines that he is writing as she is reading, words chosen and crafted into sentences, sentences built atop each other in spiraling images, all written for her. From time to time she looks down, hoping that, just once, he'll look up at her.