What the Window Meant
BY RAZRASENY
My mother always said clean the windows
when she meant: silence what you’ve seen.
So I took the rag, which was not a rag,
but her wedding slip turned grey from disuse,
and I scrubbed the daylight
until it fogged again.
The window was never only itself.
The first window let light in.
The second held her gaze—too long—
before the pills,
after the radio called itself Delilah.
She said light gets in,
but she meant shame peels itself like paint
when you leave anything unattended.
She meant: open only what you’re willing to bury
again in a room with no floor.
I opened the window,
to the hiss of the sky.
The sky had teeth.
The teeth had names.
Each name pulled up a chair
and asked me to account for my shadow—
the way a census, not knowing, counts the dead.
Outside, a bird flew into the glass
and became an entire city council meeting
on what my body could be zoned for.
My mother said clean the windows.
I asked which one?
She pointed to my face.
I scrubbed until I saw my father
moving in reverse
through the wall’s shoddy patch,
saying window
the way some men mean escape,
or maybe witness—
I never learned which.