A Picture Of You

I’ve got a picture of you somewhere in the back of my mind. Earlier that day, in the park, you wore a long, cream-and-purple woollen scarf wrapped around your neck, and a matching hat pulled down to your eyes. You were bundled up against the cold, and as you stood watching the birds in a nearby tree you smiled, and your breath smoked away into the chill air. Now you’re standing at a floor-to-ceiling window on the eighteenth floor of a hotel, smoking a cigarette as you look out at the night. You’re wearing a red silk dressing gown and your blonde hair hangs loose around your face. In the Potsdamer Platz, the trees are laden with snow, and lights blink silently on the roofs of buildings as taxicabs flit through the streets like ghosts. Just for a moment, I think you see me; then he appears, a shadow at your left shoulder. He puts his arm around you, and you turn and disappear, back into the darkness.