At the window, I spy dogs playing in the backyard, busy with sticks, busy with each other. I see two or three solid women built, it would appear, for manual labor and for carrying water from the lake. I hear birds. They are chirping. Many more birds, much more chirping than I’ve seen, than I’ve heard. Sky, the color of charcoal, breaks up in the middle of the day and dissolves, letting the warm light through. The dappled light, in liquid golden spots on the ground, grows, joins with itself.

At the window, I see, is it, yes it must be, I see buds on the tree branches. The tree branches, until recently, were grey twisted skeletons. But still, look, there are spots of life. Life joining, growing, waiting; life begins to show. Vitality thrills, vibrates through the veins of the trees.

The city rolls back and away from me, with rows of towering buildings, bustling – I would imagine bustling – bustling concrete canyons. Where the homeless man begs for a quarter. Where the overwrought and overworked mother takes her fevered child to the doctor. Where business men tell each other they are busy, so busy. Where so many wait for the weekend to do much, to do little, to do something else. And the apartment across the way. Dead canceled windows. No one is home. Lonely dogs waiting for their owners.

At the window, I reckon time too with space. Time means as little here, in my space, as it does in a coffin. I have as much use for time as does a fish. But outside, beyond, time suddenly has meaning. Time counts. Beyond my window, where time ticks, it expands too and spreads. What forest, what ancient history passed here before the buildings, before the concrete? What history will pass here yet?

Beyond, maybe there’s another like me, a compatriot, a twin, homebound, at his window, at her window. Looking out. Trying to look intentionally. Trying to see intentionally. Ignoring the inevitability of time. The city, the world, grows and expands. Behind me, where I don’t look, what use is there in more looking, is my tiny little space, my tiny little used oxygen that’s passed through me and out of me and back in through me. Time, as well, like my oxygen. Used. Reused. Beyond, meanwhile, beyond, space is stunning and disproportionate. I can’t displace it. If I were to walk out there into it, if I were to be out there in it; could I displace it? Could I make myself known?

Buried alive, do you scratch at the ceiling of your box, knowing that there is still six more feet of suffocating earth? Imprisoned, innocent or guilty, do you start a slow steady project at digging at the wall?

Like the witch in Spirited Away, the space the size the vastness of it would grab my name and steal it

SS