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The breeze greeted me, stretching through my cracked window. It brushed over my walls, slathering a remedy over everything inside. Years had passed since I’d cherished something so simple as the wind, and my window allowed me that moment. My reaction was visceral. I pictured dangling my legs from my windowsill, cutting through my sternum, and snapping open fragile ribs to bare my lungs, hungry to expose myself to more of the open air. This violence of my thoughts left me in a daze, knocking my knuckles at the pane until reality crept back to me.

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I’m aware this image is disturbing—big yikes, heebie-jeebies type of stuff. But I mean to say I've always adored the idea of windows, and I've been even more enamored since that day. They’re gateways, windows, and I’d even say they hold more power than doors. A bold statement, I know, but think about it: a window opens more ways than one, and like a door, it’s a way into a room—less obvious, more cunning. Doors connect to more doors, only some lead outside, but windows transport between worlds.

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As a child, I pressed my hand against my bedroom window. It was cracked near the top, and a screen added an extra layer between me and the outside. Even then, I was discontent with the world, and I didn't dare blink as I willed the glass beneath my touch to transform and lead me somewhere new. I don't know how it made sense, but I was convinced I could make a window into a portal, then I'd crawl through it into a more beautiful universe than the one I was born into. At some point, that bravery of mine all but vanished, and now I stare out my window to see only the future prowling out there, waiting to take a bite out of me. With age, my room became all I knew, and in my mind, my idea of windows split from something magical into something common yet terrifying. A curious duality.

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Between the fatigue of routine, I long for what's outside, pray to feel alive in the way nature soaks water from soil, beats blood into eternity. But I fear it as well. So, I stand, low on battery, yearning to touch my bare toes to the grass outside and run as far away from my room as I can until uncertainty stops me.

 

Day after day, my window beckons me, and I cozy up in my refurbished desk chair next to it pondering: if the sun touches my skin, will I melt like Icarus, wings ablaze in liquid gold? A bit too dramatic, probably. Perhaps I’d feel more comfortable sliding out my window beneath the cool caress of the moon, when others sleep and I’m free from their heavy stares, just me and my ghosts facing my future head on. How afraid will I be? Will I write history from this chair, gazing out my window, or will I go out there and make it? Can I do both? If I never do either, have I lived genuinely?

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These days, I open my creaky window to let in what lies beyond my walls. I line my windowsill with geodes, stray nuts and shiny things for the squirrels and crows to play with. Sometimes, a mother raccoon dozes in the crooked branches of the tree just outside, and I tap for her attention on the glass.

 

I do my best work by my window because moonlight drenching my skin feels like encouragement. I want to be out there, beneath that light, but instead I catch my reflection in the glass—I’m barely there. And so, I stay in.

 

That’s fine, usually, because inside my window is everything I own. This is my castle in the sky. But then I wonder, when someone looks at my window from the outside in, are my blinds shut, or am I pacing in full view? What would they think of me? My neighbor’s cats must think I’m crazy. They watch me through their windows, across our adjacent yards, flicking their opinionated tails—one of them white and fluffy, the other one black and thin—when I wave my scarves at them. Inside their window is their own castle, and outside lies their future. Eventually, they saunter away, bored by my antics. I think about their world.

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I’m lonely in my room.