The Garrett Loft

In garret lofts poor artists have quite often painted women bathing, combing hair inside a nearby mirror ... Your eyes soften, and, pale as blossoms or flesh from a pear, your skin glints in the light. Snow falls outside amid the greyness and the winter cold, yet this one moment it is warm inside. Crouched in the slipper tub, you sit and hold your sprawling hair in your right hand, and comb it with your left. You smile, sing to yourself, and in the glass see pennies on the shelf, a garret-loft too bare to be your home. And I see what those starving artists see and try to catch it for eternity.