The not so benign powers of Annie

This part of my yard has no view of the road or any neighbor’s house except Annie’s-here I am safe. Annie comes out of her house on Sundays and on Mondays to work on her garden; these are the days she is off from work I assume because all other days she leaves her house at 8:15 and returns around 5:15. Occasionally, on nice days, she will come outside and sip her coffee after work but it is no guarantee. Annie is beautiful; her short black hair, which bobs slightly around her neck, makes the perfect contrast for her creamy light skin. Her lazy blues eyes the color of coral under florescent lights seems to protrude from her face at all distances. Her body is of petite elegance and grace. If I am not thinking about combating the cruelties that the world offers me I am thinking about her. Her wrapped in silk covered with the brilliance of petals grown only in the hidden rocky outskirts of Jerusalem. Her in every way that explores the warmth we might create between us.

This morning I read the newspaper trying to spot all the stories about good nature and human interest that make me happy. I was halfway through reading an article about a man who saved a golden retriever from drowning when there was a knock at my door. It was her, sweet beautiful Annie. I could see her through the side window pressing her gentle knock at my door. My heart pounded with excitement and fear at the same but somehow I gathered the courage to answer the door. As my hands unlocked the deadbolt on the heavy oak door and began to pull back the latch on the storm door behind it I felt as though I was walking through the threshold of some surreal Dali painting. Finally her face was in view, the two corals under florescent light that are her eyes glistened at me along with a polite smile that for a second took every bit of my anxiety and threw it into the recesses of some bottomless ravine. She said that she’d received a piece of my mail and wanted to return it. She then smiled and offered me to her place for coffee sometime. I gladly agreed and added my departing pleasantries as I closed the door. My head soared in ecstasy, suddenly I felt as though maybe my life wasn’t so restricted. Yes, indeed. I will sit in my garden perhaps next time invite her to my place for coffee. Yes, indeed I will.

Fixation grabs the imagination and I fall deeper…

Both Tuesday and Wednesday I sat outside in the garden waiting to see if by chance she might decide to venture out with her coffee and watch the sunset in the garden; though both days she didn’t arrive home at usual time. She had left for work at 8:15 as usual but didn’t come home until after 11pm on both days as I watched her gray Saturn pull up in the dark from my bedroom window.

What reason could this be? Perhaps nothing at all, an old friend from out of town is around, in a day’s time he or she will go back to wherever they are from, and things will return to normal. Or maybe she was doing some sort of overtime or a different work schedule, nothing I’m sure that would disrupt her from me on a permanent basis. Nothing at all I’m positive. It’s not like she has found a lover? No, it couldn’t be.