She is wearing something or other that I don’t notice; don’t care about. Her hair, bordering between raven black and maple tree bark, is twisted one way or another that I don’t bother to notice. Her hands are full of one thing or another of which I can’t tell; don’t try to figure out.


She looks beautiful.


She smiles at me (or maybe it was just in my general direction) in the same way she always does, a way I can’t explain. I’ve never really been able to explain smiles. Or laughs. Or faces that make my heart leap or the corners of my own mouth turn up in thought and delight.


The truth is that Natalie King doesn’t even know I exist. I don’t think she’s even aware of her own existence, to be honest. What I mean is that Natalie is a dreamer. She always has a far off look in her eye as if she were surrounded by a wonderland that only she can see. What I long to tell Natalie is that I can see it too.


Today I sit where I am not noticed and watch Natalie. I watch her kick off her shoes with the most graceful and beautiful of kicks. It is perfect. I watch her check what she calls her “messages”. She always has at least one from the same male voice that I have learned to despise.


I watch her tie back her hair in a dancer’s knot, and pull open the whatever-it’s-called as she drums her delicate nails against the counter and searches with her fantasy-filled eyes for something to make for dinner. I watch her take out fresh something-or-others and day old who-even-cares. She ties on her colorless tie-thing and turns on the noise-producing whatever-it-is.


I watch her wrist move perfectly with the knife as she chops this, dices that. Slices I’m-not-paying-attentions and minces why-should-I-cares. She dances and sways and twirls and turns, every movement she makes is a new step in her dance. The dust from her imagination swirls with her, wrapping her in a beautiful breeze of inexplicable beauty. And I can’t keep my eyes off the delighted, perfect happiness that surrounds her eyes and her nose and her mouth and her hands and her feet, can’t stop watching her


Until finally she is pulling down her magical locks of hair and slipping into sleep beneath fabric?-what’s-that’s. She lays her angelic head on her I-forget-what-it’s-called and feigns sleep for a second or two…before


Her lashes flutter open and she smiles that same perfect smile of love.


With that same smile I realize how in love I am with her and how in love she is with someone else.


And suddenly I sense that it’s grown dark and fly back to my nest where I belong.