(n. the urge to look through people’s windows as you pass by their houses.)
It’s a peer into a life I’ve not led—
a glance through houses of people unknown
to me in a dark, sleepy, August town.
At night, the illuminated pane squares
are my television while they watch theirs:
blue light infomercials and game show hosts.
But as they watch the screen and I watch them,
I wonder who watches me driving home.
Never voyeuristic, only by chance
as my car halts at the steel octagon
or a red light’s doctrine, pedestrians
to catch the pale liquid light of selves
in a somnambulist’s obscure dreamworld
elseways unseen, all in under a minute.
It’s a peer into a life I’ve not led—
a glance through houses of people unknown
to me in a dark, sleepy, August town.
At night, the illuminated pane squares
are my television while they watch theirs:
blue light infomercials and game show hosts.
But as they watch the screen and I watch them,
I wonder who watches me driving home.
Never voyeuristic, only by chance
as my car halts at the steel octagon
or a red light’s doctrine, pedestrians
to catch the pale liquid light of selves
in a somnambulist’s obscure dreamworld
elseways unseen, all in under a minute.
Leslie Benigni is originally a Pittsburgh native that traded concrete for cornfields to pursue her MFA at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Her work has been published or forthcoming in :Lexicon, Athenaeum, and Roadrunner Review. Twitter & Instagram: @benignileslie.