They assumed,

We all had a window and we all had eyes to look at/through one. The place I reside, I have never come across a single window — a single hint of an outside. Neither have I talked to a human who could properly explain what it was looking at or looking out of. I could be a dog to this universe, I wouldn’t know. What I say could be classified as purrs, friendly barking or dogly yelps.

To the red ants lined on curtains (behind which could have been a window) I am nothing more than a big lamp with no bulb lit up inside.

To me,

I am that dirty window who looks at dark roads with glassy eyes
I have two windows, one for each breast
I have one window -
for one eye and one that took a bullet shock, for the other

I can walk or float through myself. But I cannot see nothing but roads

I have a stack of regrets piled at the window that I am. This has made it hard to open myself and let the wind in. On the positive side, I am convinced that there is no moving wind left to enter any of our homes. Other than more of the same long pitch-black road, I am not missing much.

My cheeks are sliding snow
Touch me once, become a fir tree yourself

My cheeks are grass that creeps up a window, any window
Touch me once, become a runnel yourself

My cheeks are attached to life. Like a ripe fruit
about to end. Touch me once, become a statuette yourself

For the windows, mirrors, shadows, mirages we are to each other. Planted at each others backs, looking through each others throats. For the readers and builders of windows that we are. For the little blackbirds that we stitch from left over sun-ash every end of every day. To the falling wooden panels and to the ones freshly painted, all I have to say is that I might be a dog to you. I might be a dog barking at the roads, leaping out of the window of self. I might be your dog or a floor-lamp to those ants. I might be the last window standing in the universe of walls with openings for breasts and one leaking eye. I, like my cheeks am firmly attached to that same life, we are all hanging on. Growing fruits, here to burst. To you, Do touch me once, become a window yourself.


Painting - Mädchen am Fenster (Sonia Gramatté). Aquarell. 1921. Public Domain.