Between Windows

I have grown used to trading windows,

expanding

shrinking

expanding

shrinking.

I trade something each time as I move simultaneously closer and farther away.

Farther from family > closer to friends > farther from friends > closer to work >

farther from work and friends > closer to family.

I am back again in my old school chairs at a table etched with frustration and curious graphite. An old/new window looks down on stable green surroundings. It is an out-of-body experience of an earlier time, a dream of youth remixed.

But I feel so much older, ancient from the memories of windows before.

Cheaply made glass panes distinguish my realities.

At home in California we had a giant sliding glass door. We rarely used it as a door except to move furniture in and out. For me, it was always a window. Blue gum eucalyptus veiled us from the parking lot and invited soft blue shadows to inhabit mint green walls.

It was the first and only time a home felt like it was truly our own, not a borrowed space. That was before we left, before we were charged to dust the blinds and paint the insides of cabinets – charged to erase our existence.

Right before we left for the last time, I sat down against the wall we’d painted in our attempt to pretend the place was our own.

I was covered in shadows and light and I was everything in-between.

We were going home and I mourned because we never had the option to hold on to what was…

A window, a portal, to my desired existence.

Potted Plants,

Pipe Tobacco

Fake Spider Webs

Candles and Lanterns

White Columns

Splatters of Scarce Rain

Raccoons...

Here there is hemlock, moss, and lichen.

Here there is family and forgetfulness.

The remnant is a navy rocking chair that belongs to the spirit of a friend. The “I” that once was is no more and the window has become the in-between.