JAZZ ON FRIDAY NIGHT

 It is Friday night. In the air you can feel jazz melodies, perfume fragrances and food, which is sold with a few percent discount. Tired bodies dress up festively and go to get drunk with a cheap beer and jazz to forget about the system. From the closest pub, amateur musicians play without talent cover versions of their lives. In front of the pub a dog and a cat chase each other in a circle, proving that opposites are attracted. The pub is full of tired faces who have come to tell the world that their bodies still represent life. They come here regularly, looking for new emotions.

I stand in the empty room and the jazz music strikes in the closed window as a dance invitation. I slowly dress my green dress, in which I am tempted to seduce you. So, as I did it thousand times in my thoughts. I put my red lipstick, whose language does not need to be translated. It sends an invitation. My dark hair merges with the night out, ready for victories and voluntary losses.

You stand alone in your empty room. You are slowly dressing your dark blue shirt, in which you could hide your insecurity. Then you decisively reach for the perfume that should inspire determination. Instead, its sharp and exotic aroma fills you with doubts. Doubts like before hunting.

The pub is already full of people, old stories and gossips. Lonely eyes, blurred by the steam, go around hoping that somebody will stop them and speak. Tired of life and swollen by the alcohol faces tell about old victories when hunting was the surest way to impress a woman. No, not their wife, who is already something that has been experienced and that does not bring new excitements. The male eyes are looking for a new woman with a green dress that will admire their stories and silent pauses behind which they will try to conceal their excitement. Women's eyes are looking for heroes, hunters of lonely hearts like theirs. Women's eyes can see the excitement, because they are already somebody's wives, exercising every day not to notice the white hair and the old stories of past victories of their unfaithful husbands.

It is full of women with green dresses and red lipstick. It is full of tall men with dark blue shirts and shy eyes. But I am not there. You too are missing.

I stand ready for a date. I stand alone in my empty room and wait for you to give me a sign. You do the same. You rely on my determination and free spirit. We need just a little bit to cross the line of our fantasy. We need a little bit of madness.

The time passes. Our tired bodies are eager to dance together at the rhythms of the jazz. But the jazz is getting quieter and more intimate. We dance at the rhythms of the jazz, each of us with its own fantasy. I cannot find a reason for great insanity and I do not invite you to meet. You have no courage to do the same.

Outside in the middle of the empty lonely street a lonely old dog howls sadly. His voice merges with the rhythms of the saxophone to sing the song of the unrequited love. Crazed by the jazz moon is yawning wearily, winks playfully at the tired old dog and goes to sleep.

Only your small window remains lit. You look in the sleeping moon and you seek my reflection. I look enviously at the tired by dancing moon and I seek you. Then I draw your face on the window. You draw my face on your window. So we shorten the distance. So we practice to be brave.

An empty table stands in the corner of the overcrowded with empty showy happiness pub. An empty table with two glasses, a bottle of red wine and a burning candle. They are ready for our meeting.

Drawn faces from the windows flow down from the heat of the night. So I and you are merging into one face. For a moment free from suffering.

Because it is a Friday night. When everything is jazz and longing for freedom.

(Elena S. Lyubenova)