HELENA PÁLSSON

Naked people in windows

i love a naked person in a window with the lights on

their wobbly bits wobbling away

who forgets

or doesn’t care

that there aren’t any curtains and that

windows can be seen through

by people like me

on the street below on rue auguste barbier

with my notebook and empty chair

alone, in some kind of a meditation at a bar

i look up and see a naked woman

inside her warmly lit rectangle

with french doors and everything

she moves swiftly around

something is found – a fresh pair of knickers?

she gives her bush a pat

feeling its bounce

her bedroom is a stage on which the drama of her life plays out

and tonight i am the audience

Are you going on a date? Who with?

i ask her telepathically

i photograph myself with my 0.00% beer

i text this to my best friend miriam who lives

3,866 miles away in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 

i have learned that people text photos of themselves now

so i do that too

i have found the hipster streets of Paris, I text

they are in the 20th

i write in my notebook

i am starting to think that romantic love does not exist

the waiters at the bar look very cool

they have moustaches and oversized white tees and levi jeans (probably 501s)

they are very forgetful

this world is so serious and expensive

i write

my notebook holds it all

i am worried that everything is a transaction

even love

seeing a naked person makes me smile, reminds me that

deep down i am a silly billy

not just an adult who worries about the fate of humanity

i feel more connected to a naked person alone in their room

searching for something

pinching a roll of fat

than i do to all the clothed people around me talking

talking talking

i love the unexpectedness with which

a truck driver with muscly arms and a beard and

perfectly-formed, cone-shaped breasts

suddenly appears

illuminated by the blue light of his truck on a lay-by on the A19 in Scotland

this was a long time ago when i still liked people

you’re lonely because you keep bloody moving all over the shop

i get a flashback of my online counsellor

is that really why i’m lonely?

i ask the moon

i love the surprise of the sight of the man, totally starkers

in his ground floor bedroom with its 6ft window

that faces onto the bustling rue eduardo coelho in lisboa

a beergut asserting its right to be

a right that i have not yet claimed

not really

that man should be famous by now

go there

maybe you will see him

there you are, my love I whisper as

i skip down the slippery, cobbled street

with nowhere to be and no one to meet

no longer afraid of falling over

a fate that happens to visitors with inappropriate footwear

there is a bounce in my step now that i have seen a naked person

maybe feelings will develop or maybe we’ll just be friends

the words of my new lover echo in my head

i do not like this combination of words

i write this sentence in my notebook and draw a picture of

a creature putting needles into its ears

my good luck totem is a human being in their birthday suit

when i spot one

i know that

life will get better soon,

probably

i was once a naked person in a window

on weser straße, berlin

at the quiet end

my silouette moved from bed to table to chair

i cupped a breast to feel its weight as i changed a song

there was another naked person with me then

pouring two mugs of prosecco

i didn’t care if some stranger saw me

i knew who i was

what i was supposed to be doing

i thought that there was something that i was supposed to be doing

i hope that i was a naked person in a window

who made someone stop and smile

someone alone, meditating at a bar

searching for something that will end their search

something new, anything, please

just something different

a vision

of a naked human in a window with the lights on

holding up a sign that says

keep going

life will get better soon

Helena Pálsson is of Icelandic-Spanish heritage and British born. She is a new writer and lives in Edinburgh. Berlin is her second home.