Fear of Scandal

Wouldn't it have been better to open the door — my love — and give me shelter? I would have laid your table. With fried eggs and tomato. With bread and cheese. Onion soup I would have cooked for you in the cold and rainy winters. I would have taken down the curtains of your study and washed them. I would have cleaned the windowpane I would have brought the sky without stain or dust into your horizon. I would have stayed with you with the sound of your breathing. And I would have heard the sound of the pages of your open book and I would have seen you up close up close at the time of your afternoon nap, under the roof of this love. Under the roof that you feared you feared would collapse on our heads with the repeated blows of the repeated day with scandal. You went away, you went away you shut the door and did not see sitting on the threshold of your house — days and nights and days and nights — pointed at by people: — a woman in red in the city mad for you...