The Spectator

He loved to look at bodies, so he said.
His highrise faced another just as tall.
He didn't care for women in his bed,

preferred them through the window. "I'll never wed,"
he vowed. "Why bother? From here, I see it all."
"I only like to look," he often said.

"A neighbor pulls a dress over her head,
and I'm a happy man. Marriage is hell.
I don't need a woman in my bed."

His favorite window overlooked a spread
of neon signs. He called the woman "Nell,"
who often stood there looking out, he said,

half-nude. And while he watched she'd sometimes shed
her clothes right there. "I think she isn't well,"
he told me once. "I watch her from my bed.

She's lovely, but she seems distracted, sad."
If he was ever lonely, who could tell?
He loved to look at bodies, as he said.
He didn't want a woman in his bed.

--Beth Gylys