windows

last night it was so cold the blue fluid froze on my windshield
and we sat, her and I, in a small bar, talking for the first time

she was all about windows
family’d come from a house with shutters,
tin roof, no glass

and her first memory was upside down
looking up at a window
leg twisted in the spring of a rocky-horse

next, in a car, locking the door
rolling up the window, maybe three years old
curling into a ball, crying, rocking
her sister who doesn’t remember
soothed her with songs

now floating outside
like heat escaping through the cracks
the self, a maybe illusion,
of see through walls
drifting over the seldom said
as if reflecting, “if
I’d a known
that it would all come to nothing…"

r.z.