Orbits

by Melita Schaum

I had been thinking how much fuller the trees were, how much smaller the
yard than when I sprinted its length to meet the chugging schoolbus
thirty years ago. Idling curbside in my car with out-of-state plates at
one in the afternoon, I feel illicit, like a spy looking at the darkened
upstairs windows of my childhood home. I inhale the azaleas, fragrant
and bitter like the past, when suddenly a large naked woman rises like a
white planet between the curtains and looks down at me, her breasts huge
and gibbous in the dark refracted glass. We gaze at each other, my
mouth fallen open at her unabashed skin. Gargantuan Venus, gleaming
like a moon among the maturing maples. How is it that that look
unbuttons time, undoes like laces the history of my lean, unhappy
girlhood? In a moment she will turn back to her lover, perhaps another
woman, lying naked on the unseen bed. It's no one, she says, and the
slim past is devoured by this moment's plenty. Already I can hear their
lawless laughter as I drive off, whispering my almond blossom,
whispering my pulsing star.

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