three glimpses thru a window

The pile on the noon lawn is protean breakup debris: man's clothes and plastic junk the shapes of which elude the sidewalking casual eye and hangers and papers and wrappers and razors and usb chargers and I keep walking, and when I return by an hour later the only thing to disturb it is the wind and eventually it is gone, over the course of the day, scattered, dispersed, collected, gone except for bill statements wetted and hung over privet hedge to dry and flake in the sun and be carried away over two days.  The secondfloor window from whence it spilled open one hour and closed the next for rain.  Nothing much seems to happen.

Days later going back home to finish laundry passing the cops wondering where they parked and nothing much seems to be happening on noonstreet, our foot patrol thumbs in their vests doing the slow strut up the steps to the building where the pile was, eyes on the secondfloor, calling in wondering Where she is.  I don't see their car and they don't seem on alert.  Switch the laundry out and back outside back past and the twentysomething hair up in a dayathome bun in blackshirt blackpants is explaining He's gone I put everything out But he has a key If you'll stay here I'll go up He's unpredictable.  My last walk back on the last load her head out the window one patrolman's saying If he comes back.

Same afternoon same street altogether empty except for the smoker in cloudgray wrestling his taped-up gym bag 'round his sixpack, a standout, unfamiliar face wreathed in a white cirrus as he passes me fresh cigarette bogeyed to lips he busts out BRENDA behind me and I chance a look back, up, and to the left at the closed busted-out bedroom window the hole in the glass a parallellogram drawn with french curves, pieces of the whole laid on the patchy grass where billpaper mache coats the brush and cloudgray stranger shouts BRENDA, BRENDA he bawls again cigarette between his fingers and pacing the fence up and down up and down howling BRENDA, and I'm fingering my phone but five minutes later he's gone.