The Window
The Window
A window is just a window, you might say. Just glass, wood, and maybe a little paint.
However, a window is never just a window. Looking through one, you can see life, love and happiness blooming right before your very eyes. Sometimes it hurts me, to look through the glass that is slowly gathering dust. It hurts me because I am waiting.
Waiting for you.
I spend my days here, the little flame of hope that I will see you again never diminishing, never faltering, just like my love for you. I sit here and stare down the road, and as I see the happy people walk by, I see your face on every one. I see your cheeky smile, and sometimes I even hear your laugh, floating into my ears through the small crack at the top of the pane. I often think back to the last time I saw you, marching down the road with your friends, with a proud grin on your face, waving to me as I stood at the front door, waving goodbye. As the last khaki-clad man turned the street corner, I went back inside, wishing you were back already.
People often come to see me. They ask how I am, and I reply despondently, that I am fine. I don’t like lying, but I am ever so good at it now. They smile, and tell me that they are glad that I am fine.
I never look at them; never take my gaze off the window, for fear that I will see the pity in their eyes as they try to talk to me. For I am trapped in my own world. A small, lonely world, filled with nothing but love, loss, and longing. I push my friends and family away, wanting no one but you to fill my days. Without you, my days are always empty, no matter who or what happens to pass through. They can see the dark emptiness in my eyes, eyes that used to shine with happiness. The pity they feel for me only heightens the sense of loneliness. They pity me because I still have hope that I will one day see you walking down the street towards me, arms open wide as I rush out to welcome you back home.
They don’t realise that the day you left, you took my heart and love with you. Looking through the window, I sometimes wonder whether I will ever get back what you left with; without it, any emotion besides sadness, loss and despair seems like distant memory that was cruelly taken away when I lost you to otherworldly clutches.
Not knowing is the worst part of it all. Not knowing if you still belong to this world, or if you have been taken from me. I have been waiting at this window ever since the end. When the fighting ended, and the soldiers were finally sent back, all the women rushed out into the street to welcome their war heroes back home. I was as happy as the rest of them! But, as the bright afternoon sunlight faded, and the friends and families went back into their homes, I was left standing outside, smile fading with the light.
I went back inside, eventually, when my heart felt so heavy I felt it would drag me to the ground. At first, rage filled my heart. I was angry with everyone around me, as if it were they who had robbed me of my love. However, as time passed, the anger passed with it, and I receded into my mind, reliving the memories we shared repeatedly, as if hoping them to become a reality. The memories are the reason I remain at this window. When I look outside, I can see the street where we played as children, where we grew up together.
In our small front garden, the sunlight glistens off the pond, where a dragonfly hovers, vibrating and iridescent in the cool breeze. The sun shines and the birds sing in the exact same way they always have; nothing has changed, yet to me, this is a completely different world from the one we shared.
This world terrifies me. The horrifying possibility that I might forget you is something that is always at the back of my mind, shut away deep inside where I can’t hear it’s evil voice whispering to me, telling me truths that I never want to believe. This voice keeps me awake at night, and when I eventually allow sleep to overcome me, it’s in my subconscious. Forgetting is almost worse than losing you; if I forgot what your face looks like, or the way your gentle voice calms me, or even the way you tapped your pen against your teeth when deep in thought, then I would have nothing left.
With nothing, I would not be able to carry on. It is the memories that come to me with this window that enable me to breathe, to exist.
So, although made of glass, wood and maybe a little paint, the sights in the view from a window can be priceless. They can be the one thing you need to sustain a memory, and in that memory, a person.
A window is never just a window.
However, a window is never just a window. Looking through one, you can see life, love and happiness blooming right before your very eyes. Sometimes it hurts me, to look through the glass that is slowly gathering dust. It hurts me because I am waiting.
Waiting for you.
I spend my days here, the little flame of hope that I will see you again never diminishing, never faltering, just like my love for you. I sit here and stare down the road, and as I see the happy people walk by, I see your face on every one. I see your cheeky smile, and sometimes I even hear your laugh, floating into my ears through the small crack at the top of the pane. I often think back to the last time I saw you, marching down the road with your friends, with a proud grin on your face, waving to me as I stood at the front door, waving goodbye. As the last khaki-clad man turned the street corner, I went back inside, wishing you were back already.
People often come to see me. They ask how I am, and I reply despondently, that I am fine. I don’t like lying, but I am ever so good at it now. They smile, and tell me that they are glad that I am fine.
I never look at them; never take my gaze off the window, for fear that I will see the pity in their eyes as they try to talk to me. For I am trapped in my own world. A small, lonely world, filled with nothing but love, loss, and longing. I push my friends and family away, wanting no one but you to fill my days. Without you, my days are always empty, no matter who or what happens to pass through. They can see the dark emptiness in my eyes, eyes that used to shine with happiness. The pity they feel for me only heightens the sense of loneliness. They pity me because I still have hope that I will one day see you walking down the street towards me, arms open wide as I rush out to welcome you back home.
They don’t realise that the day you left, you took my heart and love with you. Looking through the window, I sometimes wonder whether I will ever get back what you left with; without it, any emotion besides sadness, loss and despair seems like distant memory that was cruelly taken away when I lost you to otherworldly clutches.
Not knowing is the worst part of it all. Not knowing if you still belong to this world, or if you have been taken from me. I have been waiting at this window ever since the end. When the fighting ended, and the soldiers were finally sent back, all the women rushed out into the street to welcome their war heroes back home. I was as happy as the rest of them! But, as the bright afternoon sunlight faded, and the friends and families went back into their homes, I was left standing outside, smile fading with the light.
I went back inside, eventually, when my heart felt so heavy I felt it would drag me to the ground. At first, rage filled my heart. I was angry with everyone around me, as if it were they who had robbed me of my love. However, as time passed, the anger passed with it, and I receded into my mind, reliving the memories we shared repeatedly, as if hoping them to become a reality. The memories are the reason I remain at this window. When I look outside, I can see the street where we played as children, where we grew up together.
In our small front garden, the sunlight glistens off the pond, where a dragonfly hovers, vibrating and iridescent in the cool breeze. The sun shines and the birds sing in the exact same way they always have; nothing has changed, yet to me, this is a completely different world from the one we shared.
This world terrifies me. The horrifying possibility that I might forget you is something that is always at the back of my mind, shut away deep inside where I can’t hear it’s evil voice whispering to me, telling me truths that I never want to believe. This voice keeps me awake at night, and when I eventually allow sleep to overcome me, it’s in my subconscious. Forgetting is almost worse than losing you; if I forgot what your face looks like, or the way your gentle voice calms me, or even the way you tapped your pen against your teeth when deep in thought, then I would have nothing left.
With nothing, I would not be able to carry on. It is the memories that come to me with this window that enable me to breathe, to exist.
So, although made of glass, wood and maybe a little paint, the sights in the view from a window can be priceless. They can be the one thing you need to sustain a memory, and in that memory, a person.
A window is never just a window.