Dear Blank. That’s how I think of you.

Nameless as your eyes would disclose you

if I got that close.

You may have noticed me, though,

in my window above the street

where I pretend to be switching channels.

I suspect your mother suspects

I have been watching you,

and maybe she is correct to guard

her clothesline, the seven flavors

of your nighties, your pantyhose having a fling

with the breeze. If you think I am humorless

you are wrong. I see the comedy

of those popsicle-colored convertibles

you and your friends jazz around in.

I see your father’s pride

when he waters the flowers and you

practice handstands or pump your arms

and work over the grunts 

of a high-school cheer.

I’m not going to slide out of shadow

with a voice full of peanuts, Hey, Girlie,

a crank who stuffs pigeons 

into a sack. Oh, no. Secure in my creephood,

it’s enough to watch, knowing that one day

perfect teeth enter the pizza

that breaks the cartwheel’s back.

Check out other work in the Strange Faces Other Minds series here.