Witnessed Through a Windowpane

THE SUN SETS LACKADAISICALLY LIKE MOLASSES ON HOT SUMMER NIGHTS. Sometimes there is a soft breeze that pushes the pieces of trash across the parking lot, lightly scraping the pavement. The air burns like the cigarette butts pressed into the ground and it chokes me sometimes. I am grateful for the dripping A/C unit beneath my window and the cool-but-not-cold water that drips from my sink. My landlord still hasn’t addressed these things and probably never will, but I am content with living like this.

There is a man that lives in the apartment complex right across from me and he never closes his windows. His walls are a maddening, insidious shade of red and I can see his tall, lanky figure washing dishes. If this was a Taylor Swift music video, I would hold up a sign that says, ‘You ok?’ and we would communicate this way, back and forth, until one or both of us holds up a sign that says, ‘I love you.’ And then we would fall hopelessly in love, because that’s what people in music videos do. That’s what I intend to do, once I find the right person.

I’ve been scouring every apartment and peering through every window starting at dusk in search of my true love. I know they’re here – I know they’re near to me. I can sense them, I can feel them in the dead of night. Sometimes, I awaken with my heart pounding and my eyes widened, and I am pulled from my slumber because I know that my lover is nearby. I can intuitively feel their presence, and I know that I must find them with the kind of urgency that drives one to jump out of bed and run, tripping over the blankets and banging her head on the doorframe on the way out. Some nights, I run out into the darkness and the stench of cigarettes and the nearby dumpster, because I have to find them. I have to find the person I love.

This kept happening every night until I could bear it no longer. So now, as soon as the sun sinks into the city line and the streetlights cast an eerie glow onto the pavement, I begin my search. I silently meander around my apartment complex in search of the person I love. Next door, there lives a woman who wears her hair in ringlets and smokes like a chimney. She does not clean her apartment much and she spends most of her time staring dead-eyed at a television screen. I would imagine that she watches reality TV, but I can’t see the screen from the kitchen window. I must be discreet. I don’t think that I could fall in love with her, so I move swiftly next door.

A married couple bickers with one another while their child, no more than five or six years old, scribbles into a tattered coloring book. She seems unfazed by their argument which escalates into screams, and then the husband is burying his fist into the wall and the wife is shattering a coffee cup against the doorframe. Shards of glass scatter onto the ground and the child flinches. My eyes dart back and forth from face to face, each of them troubled. I cannot love these people, though perhaps love is exactly what they need. I cannot give it to them. I am seeking my soul mate. I move onto the next window, which is slightly ajar.

The woman inside is fanning herself aggressively with a newspaper while reading a book, or maybe journaling – I cannot tell because her back is turned to me – and she has a wet cloth on her neck. I would imagine that her A/C stopped working, and I would also imagine that our landlord does not care enough to fix it in a timely manner. This woman is feverish and entrancing and her long, dark hair is thrown up in a ponytail. She has a slender figure and bottlecap wrists and I get the feeling that she has a lovely voice, too. I like to imagine the little details and stories about the people whom I observe; I like to picture in my head what they’re like, their deepest fears and the things that keep them trucking through the monotony of daily life. This woman has a tattoo on her arm but I cannot read it. I look down at my own tattoo of a firefly on my wrist and I think to myself that she and I could be friends, maybe even best friends, but not soul mates.

If I climb the ladder that leans against the shed next door, I can look through the sliding glass doors of the apartments on the second and third floor. So that is precisely what I do. I peer into B6 and I see a withered old man sitting in a leather recliner, his head thrown back, his glasses on his nose, his mouth ajar, and his chest rising and falling slowly. I would imagine that he snores very loudly and that he keeps candies in his pocket. Some mornings, I see him going for a walk and drinking in the cool air. I worry he might get mugged one of these days; there’s a reason rent is so cheap. There are a lot of weird people here, I think to myself as I squint to get a better look into the next window.

There’s a very attractive man stroking the hair of a beautiful woman, and they are gazing into one another’s eyes with the kind of fervor that I crave. There is this electric tension between them and they appear to be hooked on one another. He engulfs her in his big arms and her hands find his face. I imagine that it’s my hands brushing against his stubble; I imagine that it’s my torso that he is clutching. They kiss deeply for a moment and I am locked in a trance, yearning for whatever it is that they have. He lifts her into his arms and she wraps her legs around him like a bow around a present, and then he carries her out of my line of vision. Presumably into a bedroom that they share; or maybe, this is a one-time affair. Maybe he picked her up at a bar and brought her home. Maybe they will never speak again after tonight. I stare into the empty living room for a little while longer, feeling very alone, before I hear a voice from down below.

“What are you doing up there?”

I look down and see what I believe to be a middle-school kid. He is small and round with glasses that glint in the streetlight.

“I – uh – well…” I stammer as I begin to quickly and clumsily climb down the ladder, “I’m looking at the moon.”

“The moon?” He pushes his glasses up his face and stares at me in disbelief, and we are face-to-face now and of equal height; perhaps he is younger than I thought.

“Yes. I get a fantastic view of it up there. It’s a waning crescent tonight. Did you see the last full moon?” I fib seamlessly and wonder where this kid’s parents are, and why he’s wandering around in the middle of the night.

“No.” He replies with a tinge of uncertainty in his voice, as if he is nervous to be talking to me.

“It was the strawberry full moon and it was a sight to behold. I mean, really. I like to look at the moon most nights, but I never, ever miss the full moon. I’m saving up my money, and one of these days, I would like to buy a telescope so that I can see it more clearly. The moon is very powerful, you know.”

“Yeah. It controls the ocean waves.”

“Yes, of course, but it also controls our emotions. It has a divine feminine energy, much like the sun has a divine masculine energy. We are more in tune with our emotions beneath the moon, especially the full moon. Hey, anyway, what are you doing out here? It’s late.”

“I’m looking for my cat. He’s an orange tabby and his name is Taco.”

“Oh. Well… I haven’t seen him, but I’ll keep an eye out. You should get home, though. There are a lot of weirdos out at this time of night. And don’t talk to strangers.” I scold him.

With that, the kid nods and jogs away. I watch as he makes his way out of sight and then I soak in the sights around me for the first time tonight. I have to be more careful about not getting caught. It’s easy to lie to a child, but I could get in trouble if an adult finds me looking through windows at night. It’s not as bad as it sounds, though; I’m not trying to invade anyone’s privacy, I’m trying to find my soul mate. That’s an admirable cause.

I observe how the streetlight gleams off of a pile of broken glass in the gravel. It reflects pure white off of each shard, and the reflected light flickers and dances as I move my head. It’s strangely beautiful, and I think it’s neat how something as useless as broken glass can be beautiful. I think that a lot of people are like broken glass; not much to look at in the daytime, but they are illuminated at night if you shine the right amount of light on them from the right angle. Anyone and anything can be beautiful if you just add moonlight. And people, also much like broken glass, can be very dangerous. Sometimes it’s best to admire from a distance rather than cut yourself on their sharp, unforgiving edges. That’s what I like to do: admire them from a distance. I have bled enough in this lifetime at the hands of dangerous, unyielding people. Now I prefer to admire from a distance, a sheet of windowpane glass between us – until I finally find my soulmate, that is.

I give up for the night. Usually, I spend longer searching, but I’m suddenly rather tired. I head back home and fling open my door, only to come face to face with a stranger.

I am frozen in fear. Before I can even let out a scream, he claps his hand over my mouth and slams the door, and whispers, “Shhhh. Listen. I’m the one you’ve been searching for. It’s me.”

I look up at him in utter fear and I can feel my body, small and lithe and powerless, trembling uncontrollably. He goes on: “I’ve been watching through your window for months now. I know you. Did you know that to know is to love?”

The wheels start turning in my head and I soften for a moment. Is this who I think it is? I’m not unafraid, but I am less afraid. I search his dark eyes for a moment and he smiles nervously at me. He slowly pulls his hand away from my mouth.

“How did you get inside?” I manage weakly.

“You forgot to lock the door. You do that sometimes when your mind is elsewhere, especially when you’re humming to yourself. I’m the one you have been looking for. Can you feel it? Can you feel that it’s me?”

All I feel in this moment is fear and shock, but I’ve decided to hear him out. He gently grabs my wrists and pulls me to the window. He throws back the curtains and gestures at the moon outside: the waning crescent. Even in the polluted city, it shines clear and bright in the night.

“Look at the moon and tell me that you don’t feel what I feel.”

And for a moment, I begin to feel it. I turn to him and search his face. I find genuine eyes and a chiseled jawline and an air of mystery to him. I gingerly lift a hand up to his cheek to make sure that he is real, that I am not dreaming. It’s him. We’ve never met, but we’ve known one another for so long. We lived and loved together in past lives and we’ve found each other now, in the roughest part of the city, in the middle of the hottest night of the summer. The world is burning slowly, you know. One day the sun will balloon into a red-hot giant and engulf us all in flames. We will be nothing but ash and dust, and then this entire planet will be incinerated, and all that will be left of us is love. I brush a sand-colored curl from his eyes, which fall upon my firefly tattoo. He slowly rolls up his pant leg to reveal a tattoo on his thigh of an empty mason jar. He looks back at me and I begin to feel something I have only ever witnessed through a windowpane.