Het Straatje

‒after Vermeer

Many times that winter

in your bed as the sun set

beyond the window frost

you stared at that house in Delft

tacked onto your door

to get anywhere but there

and any time but then.

But fixed beneath the linen

in that endlessness

stood the only house

you could enter.

You longed to knock on the window

and chat to the lacemaker

or help the washerwoman—

just someone to talk to—

or look at the wisteria

purpling over the bench.

But beyond the canal on Vlamingstraat

you heard only the dog yelp

out to your fragmented

stilled life.

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ALEX MEPHAM is a PhD student in York, UK, whose work has appeared in Modern Poetry in Translation and Beyond Words Magazine.