The Window

This is an assignment for my class with the prompt: the window. If you know who this is about I ask that you protect the family's privacy and not comment about them. But feel free to comment about the work itself. 

for Becky

Someone once said that the eyes are the window to one’s soul. That feels…right, especially now. My body has deteriorated like a run-down house, boarded up and sealed shut. It was once lovely to gaze upon and enchanting to explore, but over the past year, it has closed, little by little, until all I was left with were these windows. ALS does that to you. I’ve been entombed within this frame that refuses to work. But I have these windows.

I communicate using my windows, blinking once for yes, twice for no. It’s all I’m capable of now, towards the end. I use them to say when I’m hungry, thirsty, or need the restroom. But most of the time I just watch from my blue-eyed panes as life passes me by. 

When my daughter visits, I press myself against my windows urgently. I must convey my love to her, give her advice, be her mother through the windows that enclose me. Tears cloud my eyes as my frustration swells. Curse these windows! Let me be free! Release me from this translucent prison! Let me hold her one last time! 

My emotions are all squeezed through two panes. How does a glance portray the depths of my emotions? How do I show all my love, heartache, joy, and fear with so small a canvas? 

When my husband was still here I hid myself. I locked myself away and drew the curtains distancing myself from his abuse. “Why aren’t you normal? Why did you have to get ALS and ruin my life?” He left, along with the rest of my existence, and I couldn’t fight it. I didn’t want to. There is nothing left of me to fight for anyway. 

My parents care for me now, since he abandoned me. I hate that they have to watch me decay and die. No parent should have to experience that. And I have to see them watch me suffer. I can’t comfort them. I can’t affirm them, I can’t…anything. I can only gaze out of my windows because they are all I have.

A house with only two windows is dark. Gloom closes in around you until you can’t breathe, just like this disease. I will die of suffocation. I know that. My lungs will congest with fluid. Emptiness will saturate me as I lose my mind. Death will consume me from behind my windows and no one can break through and release the flood. At least I will finally be free then. Free to soar to Paradise away from my disease-riddled jail cell. 

I wonder, though, as I sit here. Did I do enough when I could move? Could I have done more to serve others? Could I have pushed myself any farther? I know that won’t save me but, oh, how regrets consume me.

The air is stale in here with just me and my thoughts.  All I have are echoes of the past. I peer out of my windows and scream, “I’m here! I want to do more! I want to live and be alive with you!” 

But people don’t listen to windows.