The Window

Looking at the window, at the layers of old paint, pealing in places, shamelessly displaying the unforgiving truth of its ugliness. Cold glass, unyielding, clinical to the touch. It is diving you ‘now’ and you ‘then,’ a thin line between two worlds. Who would have guessed that you would try to see it through the darkness, through the wall of invisible black atoms? One more time before your eyelids close for the night, one more attempt to reconcile past and present. You must be standing there on the other side, oblivious to the future, your guessing game destined for inevitable failure. Your bare soul ripped to pieces but breathing, gasping for air in its primal desire to survive. Would have you told yourself to stop crucifying every moment if you knew then what you know now? Or would have you stayed silent? And what about a different window, in another place, maybe ten years from now? Would you look back at this moment and find all the pain as pointless as it was then?

I turn around, my bare back pressed into the glass, shivering from the frozen slick surface, no longer trying to see beyond, just a deep breath in and a deep breath out. Inhale... Exhale... One... Inhale... Exhale... Two... I am here now. And it does not matter what is behind the window. I am here.