watching you watching me

i looked out through the bathroom window and down into the alley,

across the cobblestone path and under the Parisian moon

i watched the Asian woman prepare a meal

she seemed focused, engaged in the simple, repetitive act of kneading what looked like some kind of dough or something

i envied her.

i wished for that moment that we could trade lives

and i could exit my existence and enter hers

on some being-john-malkovich-type shit