Gardener

We exit at the same station, the girl with the gray off-shoulder top and I. We glide through the turnstile like factory products, with synchronized strides. Her low-hanging hips look like an afterthought to her torso; their easy sway ends and repeats with each smack of her sandals on concrete. I stare at the spot where the snarl of her curls meets her lower back - the spot where beach girls have angel wings and butterflies. My top lip is numb from mint chapstick and biting. Staring at women makes me feel lecherous when I do it the way men are supposed to, which is to appraise the body in pieces. The arch of a foot; hair lifted to reveal a neck; navel. The suggestiveness of specificity: when the body is taken in pieces, there is more to adore and more to amend.

She ascends the grimy subway stairs. I wait until her hips and butterfly spot are swallowed by evening sky. Upstairs is my street and down the street next to some construction is a crooked townhouse with gray paneled walls and three floors. The top floor is mine. I am lucky enough to have a tall window in my bedroom with a view of the little gray garden outside. Now that spring is here, the old wooden fence has begun to collapse under damp ivy. Someone has arranged several large rocks, enclosing a cluster of lilac and ferns on three sides of a square. If it were my garden, there would be more yellow. If it were my garden, I’d invite the girl with low hips to come sit on the rocks; we’d sit cross-legged and admire each other in pieces. I do not have a garden. I have a window with curtains that do little to keep the morning from coming in.

A Philadelphia native, Kira Homsher is currently an MFA candidate at Virginia Tech. When she isn't writing or greasing up the pages of a book with her nose, she enjoys playing music and scuttling about in the dark.