love in the 1940's

there are tiny avenues and boulevards that wind through the city, streetlamps on every corner. sometimes a man stands berneath them, when it rains, holding his black umbrella above his oil spill hair and silvery eyes, and he listens to the drops pitter patter on the plastic. i think he counts them, trying to get his heartbeat to synchronise with the staccato beats. but they are erratic, and he just can't.

i think the man is in love with the young woman who lives in the cottage on the hill. he watches her from under the streetlamp, and sometimes he cries. i want to tell him things will be okay, that one day they will be united, but i don't think he can hear me. sometimes he wanders into the shops along the avenue, empty-pocketed and wide-eyed. he wants to buy her something as beautiful as she, but he has no money. he has hope.

there is an ice cream parlor at the end of the block, with quiant little tables and matching chairs. the man wants to take the young woman in there one day, and show her how to laugh again. he wants to show her what love feels like, and he wants her to move out of the house on the hill and move into the city with him. he has a little apartment on the fifth floor, and he wants her to see the breakfast nook with cutout hearts and the paintings painted right on the walls like windows into other worlds. he lives in squallor but has a heart made of gold.

he will teach her to paint, if only she would come and dance in the rain with him. he will hold his umbrella chivalrously over her head, and lay his jacket across the gutter so as to not let her ruin her shoes. he wants to give her the world tied up with his heart strings. he loves standing under that streetlamp when it rains, because he'd like to think she is watching him from the big window, and giggling into her hand as he twirls around the pole like fred astaire.