windows: a love story

informally written, in short parts. just a girl and the boy next door, separated by life, connected by their bedroom windows.

prologue

the songs choked me to be sang but i nailed my mouth shut and swallowed. they hurt to swallow more than anything, more than knives, more than fire.

...

1

his window was straight across from mine, his room the mirror image of mine in a line of identical houses that stretched farther than i had ever cared to wander. if we had both leaned out of our windows and stretched, the tips of our fingers could’ve touched.

perched on a stool with my elbows on the sill of my open window, i thought songs while waiting for him to open his window and smile at me. but he never did.

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2

yelling, a bulging vein in his neck, and sour breath, that was my father. he hated me for reasons i never understood. when i heard him coming i climbed out my window and walked until it had been time enough for him to sleep. when i wasn’t there he took out the alcohol on couch pillows. i felt a little bit sad for the pillows because they were so soft. some things just were.

but i had to eat sometimes. and other times he would corner me before i could get out. those were bad times.

when my math homework got confusing i counted bruises because i had more of them than i had fingers.

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3

my favorite color was green because his eyes made it beautiful.

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4

more than anything, my father hated it when i sang. i learned young that singing meant being hit. like a dog, like an it, my bad habits were punished in the most primitive of disciplines. i couldn’t stop my mind from making songs -songs were in me- i just stopped singing them.

everything was easier if i just obeyed, like a dog, like an it.

...

5

my mother used to sing me to sleep, long, long ago, like water slipping across a mirror. the last days came then and one night she laid her hand on my mouth and whispered that she would give me her voice. she said the voice she would give me was not mine nor hers but an angel voice. she said it was ours for everyone else.

she never spoke again.

she died without a voice.

...

6

next to singing, my father hated my hair. it had never been cut. he tried to pull it out. not yours, not yours, he said, over and over, fumbling to catch it, cursing as i ducked and slid, calling me a bitch and a thief. over and over. thief. you stole your mother’s hair.

...

7

i hated the sun.

it came up behind me and covered his window so i couldn’t see. it set my pale skin on display for strangers to see. sometimes they told me they wanted to help. i closed my eyes and waited for them to go away.

other people were like the sun. sheer. bright. i was like a pebble among beads, like a crack in the wall, like a weed.

but at night i would look out my window and feel the moon. it put light in my black eyes.

...

8

my father found me asleep one night when he came home. i was so tired.

when he left i couldn’t move from the floor so i lay.

the moon shined in through the open window and the cool it gave dispersed the red cloud of pain my father had left around me.

he came to the window.

...

9

my father hit me on the head, over and over, with the blunt side of a knife, but his green eyes were in my dreams.

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10

i heard my father and i climbed out the window. i held tight to the ivy on the wall. he came into my room yelling and cursing. he went out again. i slowly went down.

my feet touched the ground and he was there to help me down.

he seemed to know that to talk would mean castigation. he took my hand and we flew under the moon to the trees behind the houses.

we ran.

...

11

trees and trees and trees and the moon followed and always, always he held my hand, and his hand felt cool and safe, like a piece of the moon, like water, like my mother, and i was not afraid because he was there.

i had been afraid for so long.

side by side, through trees, further and further forever.

but it was still so soon that he stopped and i stopped because he did.

...

12

around this last tree he led me and i saw a miracle.

a straight river was before us, a straight, flat river. and across the top of the river flew bird after bird like i had never seen, and they were bright as they flew, and loud, and one flew toward us and then past, and the next, and the next, and the next and the next.

and it was like another world.

and he held my hand and i was not afraid.

...

THE END

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epilogue

he taught me to sing again.