The Window-In-Process

We sat on the hardwood floor of her sparsely furnished apartment, sipping chamomile tea, occasionally grazing hands or knees, and talking quietly as the slow-setting June sun darkened the room.

I brought my face close to the edge of the steaming jar of tea in my hands to smell the flowers floating at its surface and raised my eyes to the window-in-process that occupied the entire north wall of the room. Three pieces of glass - woodwork, sealants and fillings left visible. All the bones exposed.  It was beautiful.

She was beautiful, too, and I was anxious. I thought about the window. I thought about her. I thought about writing.

The details collected. The smell of the tea, the exposed woodwork of the window, the angle of the sun, the energy of our close proximity. Her. She sighed heavily, ran her fingers along the ridge of her hairline where her hair was pulled away from her face, looked at the window and looked back at me.

Seated on the floor, in her workout clothes and inquisitive eyes, she told the story of the window. The landlord had knocked it out, letting the glass fall to the ground three stories below. He covered the gaping hole with a tarp the week that it was 40 degrees in the Chicago that refused to warm. The beautifully vulnerable skeleton of the window became much more complex as she spoke.

Before she and I came back to the apartment for tea and to stare at the window, we walked the length of her neighborhood city park. We enjoyed a perfect picnic of green foods and red wine in our skimpy summer clothes. We got close, but not too close. I was trying to be vulnerable. This is who I am. This is what I think. These are my hands and feet and legs. I wanted to write about vulnerability.

When the sun had finally set, we stood in the dark apartment and I packed my things to leave. We held each other tightly - briefly - at the door, and I said nothing of her pulled back hair, or her eyes, or the way our hands and knees grazed. On the way home, I wanted to write about the picnic, the tea, the girl. 

Instead, I wrote about the window.