Mrs. Klotz’s Window

Fandango’s One Word Challenge: AIR

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Mrs Klotz has an apartment on the top floor of an abandoned building down the street from where I work.

I’ve never seen Mrs. Klotz’s face, I don’t know what color hair she has,  I don’t know what kind of clothes she wears. For some reason I have taken it into my head that she wears White Shoulders perfume and during the winter she likes to wear cherry flavored chapstick.

Sometimes when I walk under Mrs Klotz’s window I can hear Mambo music drifting down to the street from a crackling radio speakers and sometimes I think I hear Mrs. Klotz singing along with it.

On Summer evenings, those cool Summer evenings that follow brutally hot Summer days I expect that Mrs. Klotz is standing at her kitchen window enjoying as the cool air as it flows in.

I have no doubt, even thought I can’t see her, that she’s enjoying the breeze with a bottle of cold soda in her hand  as she watches people running for their buses and trains.

I’ll bet she thinks we are silly, but I’ll bet she wonders where we are going and…

Mrs Klotz stands at her kitchen window and watches the empty street under her grow a little more dusty, a little more sleepy looking then the day before. It used to be such a busy street with workers and shoppers and tourists running for their buses and trains and dinner dates and ferry rides.

The street below used to be so alive with colors and sounds and smells and on the good days, music.

Sometimes on those brutally hot Summer days Mrs. Klotz  waits until the evening and she stands at her window with a cold drink in her hand looks down into the  empty street below her

and thinks about ghosts.

 

Strawberry

I spun Salted Caramels Prompt: 5 Ways To Enjoy Strawberries in a slightly different direction. 

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After I’ve finished a book

where the monster wins and the dog lives

against incredible odds

I reach for a big luscious strawberry

I touch it to my lips and then I bit down.

Hard.

 

If I am listening to a piece of music

that ends with a whisper instead of a roar

I reach for an overly ripe strawberry

I squeeze it just a little and then

I touch it to my lips and then I bite down

Hard.

 

During thunderstorms

that rock the ground and rattle my bones

I reach for an almost ripe strawberry

I touch it to my lips and then I grimace

after that I bit down on it

Hard.

 

At weddings and funerals , after we all say goodby

and promise to see each other soon, but of course we never do

I take out a little packet of dried strawberries , give them a little sniff

and then  I toss them through the air and to the ground

for the rats and birds to eat, they always bite down on them

Hard.

 

When I am alone and watching the Moon fall

and the Sun rise

I go out into my garden and find the planter where my

strawberries are clinging to  their vines

and I take my place on the ground next to them and settle down

Gently.