That's all it was. A window. With two sun-bleached drapes hanging limply on the sides, a small crack in the corner chipped paint covering the wood around it.
And yet, it shaped my life.
My sister jumped out of this window years ago. Maybe it changed me for the better. Maybe for the worse. All I know is that it changed me.
I have stared out of this window at the city street below, watching cars slosh on by during thunderstorms while rain splattered the glass. I watched the sun dip below the buildings and then watched as a few orange slivers disappeared beneath the horizon. Maybe that changed me, too.
One day, I saw him outside the window. He looked up while I looked down and he smiled a small, crooked smile and I scratched my number on a paper airplane. I wish I could say we met and fell in love, but that was a fantasy.
The airplane fell into the puddle he had been standing in. He had walked away and never looked back. The crooked smile was misread, the squint in his eyes not disbelieving my beauty. I was not as radiant as the sun or as mysterious as the moon.
Maybe that changed me, too.
I guess I'll never know. Life throws little things at us. And big things. All that change us, for better, for worse. For whatever reason. And I guess I'm happy that something changed me.
If you are changed, you cannot go back to the same person you were.
Maybe that's better.
Maybe that's worse.
