A man lives across the hall from me,
alone.
He gets three different newspapers delivered
every morning.
I come home and look up to see his blinds,
always open.

His wife left him almost a year ago.
She discovered he wrote letters to women,
asked them to defecate in plastic containers,
paid them to send it
Priority Mail.

Hurt, confused, enraged;
you could hear her screaming across the hall.
He didn’t say a word,
that I could hear.
I saw her leaving two days later.
I didn’t look her in the eye.

Before she left,
out of shame and spite,
she told the whole building.
Anyone who would listen.
I imagined how people would respond to her,
what kind of support and understanding
might be offered.
But I avoided making eye contact.

Alone in his apartment, he exists mostly
in our imaginations.
He comes and goes and never looks anyone
in the eye.
He knows.
Everyone knows.
But no one ever says a word.
People have feelings-
they need to be protected.

A woman noticed a small section of embroidery in the middle of the wall in her bedroom. It was too small to make out any pattern, so she decided to leave it alone. To see what developed. Days passed and she forgot about it. One night, she noticed it had grown to the point that it now covered her light switch, but she still paid it no mind. The light switch really wasn’t very important to her. Finally, one night she saw it suddenly. She found herself, all at once surrounded by embroidery. Violent green and suffocating red, everywhere she turned. She began tearing the strands out of the wall as fast as she could, but the more she pulled the more she herself became tied up in them. White, navy blue, mustard yellow. She was drowning in anger, obliviousness. Her husband called to her from another room.