Word Count: 359
She escaped every night through the window high up in her room. Holding her breath as she swam through the pane, leaving small whorls in the glass.
By day she would watch the birds flying, people emerge from their doors. She would stand there and no one would see her; no one looked up. There were children waiting for schoolbuses. Their laughter pealed up to the sky, mixed with the clouds to drift away out of view. There were old ladies who creeped off their porches, dressed in nightgowns with oversized fading sweaters on top. Fuzzy feet shuffling, shuffling. Each step a thought of a friend who had broken a hip. Cautiously bending to retrieve morning papers they hardly could see to read.
She was lonely. She’d never had a sister, a brother, or friend. It was just two weeks since her mother had died. Two weeks that seemed longer since she hadn’t been out of the house.
Tonight she was looking through windows. Windows when new are no more than transparent walls. Old windows ripple and slip. These she could easily swim through into the night to a dark room where she touched faces of strangers just to feel the warmth.
He was sleeping, his arms flung over his head, his legs in a perpetual run. He was dreaming. She watched him a while, bent down, then slipped inside. Into his bed and into his dream and she stayed by his side the rest of the night.
In the morning she rose to leave and he asked her to come back again.
She did, every night, for a while. Then one summer evening he opened the window to let in the warm scented air. Her world had shifted, changed by this one simple act. She became wary, scared by the large gaping hole that made the night and his room into one.
She told him her fears but he laughed them away. The next night he waited; stood by the closed window looking into the dark. And he knew that he’d never see her again. And the seed like a bubble left in the glass was his own.
