She cast her eyes
She cast her eyes downward from high in the window, across the massive ever brown sky, a physical flame dirge, setting afire the far rooftops all the way across Venice in a brilliant apartment shaped corona over and over to the east and to the west the width of the sky and over the curtainless windows of the uppermost apartments where light leans upon thin plastic blinds and wearily halts. Apartments are warm from the sidewalk. She casts her eyes downward through the dry cypress trees and gnarled, beaten, and pruned conifers laced with the brown sky and the lost window light toward the sidewalk. Discs of light reach out to the next and in each successive glimpse your figure falls, looking upward and rearing slightly arching your back but still and slow. She cast her eyes downward with each faint, dry exhalation, each sinking sigh that traced you down from hair to stocking foot into the pavement sinking. With her eyes she can put you from the all cloud sky to the dusty corner of an alcove. She does not prop you up. You drop where your feet were made to fail and fell face first then rolled and stopped. First the weight of the pain in your feet falls first and falls still pounding its way into the earth with you and it is you.
