Winds from the west

Madison Avenue in the sunshine, I'm walking alone in a Burberry trench and sunglasses, feeling like a fortune. Lunch in solitude at Bloomingdales after browsing through sheer spring dresses and purple leather gloves to the clicking sound of heels on marble. The skies aren't just clear, they're limitless, nothing like that airtight glass ceiling that kept pushing me to the ground in LA and everywhere else.

And then I get back home. S is out, mother too, all I hear is a deafening silence as the afternoon sunshine dances over dusty book shelves, velvet-clad armchairs and ivory statuettes. An opened wine bottle on the coffee table, the dry smell of worn vintage blouses hanging from the closet doors.

I kick off my shoes, slip into the kitchen barefoot and there it is, like a bleeding wound on the counter next to the fridge: a letter, an thin envelope with my name in blackest ink. Even with a return address missing I know it's from him, no one else writes a capital A like that. He takes me back to the cold in ten seconds and I can't even bring myself to open it. Maybe tomorrow.