today i remember that i am whole and filled with buttons, filled with the sounds of passage and transition. i am a spy at my window, resting my eyes there to take in their movements, resting my thoughts a little further away, so as not to get corrupted. it is a moment of purity, as the car pulls up, as the woman steps out, as she turns, as she walks away. it is a moment i am watching from just over here, from in my window. she sees me. we see each other.

today on the floating floor above my bed, the window dangerously open, i wait. you had better not try climbing in, i say, and i repeat it to myself. you had better not try climbing in. gritted teeth and three months later i wonder if i would be that angry, if i would snap limb from limb with a shotgun in my hand, if that is something we could turn to. and as dinner time discussion turns to us, us three women, we ponder what we would do to protect one another. it is love and it is anger together. it is the both of those things.

today, in a tiny moment the opposite of everything i had seen and known before, the sun broke inverted against the sea. spreading itself backwards and behind us, a tapestry of detail and smudgings, dots and smears. and there, atop the water tank, just next to the place filled with storms and with lightning, i breathed in, shallow and deep, and i waited.