De Ma Fenêtre I

(From My Window I)


It’s Sunday morning and he’s sleeping late. Filou is snuggled against my left leg on the sofa and Buddy stakes out the space to my right. Sophia is, as is often the case, perched on the breakfast bar by the open kitchen window. Outside, intermittent drizzle drifts between the buildings like aspiring snow. Someone once told me that it’s always a little bit warmer just before it snows.

On the sidewalk below, people line up around the Théâtre du Châtelet for a matinee of something. The access road along the Seine is closed to traffic, but the bicyclists and pedestrians haven’t taken to it yet. A crowd of demonstrators descends upon the Hotel de Ville where a few early-bird ice skaters make their circles in the temporary rink. If there were any leaves on the trees lining Avenue Victoria, I wouldn’t even know about the demonstration; though from here, I have no idea what they’re marching for. Pigeons. Sirens.

I’d take pictures for you, but I can’t find my camera. He asked for it yesterday when he was working on the printer and he doesn’t know where it is. Anyway, I have a long list of things to do today… Laundry is waiting in the bath room, unfinished crafts are piled up on the table. I want to make a fruit salad for brunch, maybe a goat cheese omelet and some toast with orange marmalade. There will be dishes. We’re too late for the Sunday marchée, so we will certainly make the trip up rue Saint Denis—past the closed store fronts and daylight hookers—for the week’s produce and kosher meats. I want to paint my nails… and then there’s the Salon d’Agriculture at the exposition center.

I like the days he’s home. It’s nice to have someone to do things with… for. While we’re out, I gather images, keep them until they burn a (w)hole. I’ve got a few poems in the air, on my virtual desktop, but I probably won’t get to them today… unless he’s content to stay a while in bed and watch TV. (He likes the science and society documentaries, and there’s always a few worth rewatching on PersoTV—a cable channel devoted to client generated footage and films.) If not, there’s always the solitude of his work week…