Clothesline

She is never shy. If, during a conversation with a man she admires, her gaze happens to wander off his face it is not because she is afraid to meet the scrutinizing stare of his soft gray eyes. She looks away because she happens to notice clothes drying on a third floor balcony of a neighboring building, a pair of jeans and a casual blue striped shirt. "Look!" she points out the clothesline to her interlocutor, "Isn't this quaint, in this day and age?" He follows her gesture and notices a flock of pigeons perched directly above the freshly cleaned garments on top of the brick building. The sky is deep blue. The shirt is billowing in the wind. Unfathomably, the small bodies of the doves and the abruptly leaping movement of the striped cloth cloud his eyes with tears. She who is not shy chooses not to notice his emotion and continues to stare at the brick wall.