Street-Lighter

Everyday I would see the girl standing at her window, smoking. Because of the distance between us, all that the street-lamp allowed me to see was her silhouette, that laid bare a thinnish body, unruly curls and thin streams of smoke rising up.

Exactly ten minutes into her second cigarette, a car would appear into the lane that lay between her window and mine, and then turn in her direction: Only the hands of a man could be seen, as he waved out to the girl in his orange full-sleeves.

Tonight, just as she stubbed her second cigarette out, the lights of the car flashed near the far end of our lane; there it stopped longer than usual, and slowly swerved right-in the direction of my window.

I froze.

I looked up for the girl.
There she stood, snugly latched on to the orange full-sleeved arms of a man, both looking back at me with puzzled concern. As I kept squinting harder to figure the face of the man out, the cigarette-smoke from between my fingers kept clouding my vision more and more...