Vulnerability

There is a window.

Its paint is chipping away slowly.

Like someone with OCD

has been picking at

the skin covering the wood.

Until the winter wind nips

under the frame.

But the cold is a warm hug

compared to the frost inside.

A cold stone sits on the windowsill,

where her heart used to reside.

The glass is one breeze away

from shattering.

It’s clouded,

With the dust of many years.

She feels numb when he takes her hand.

But through that splintering wood,

the sun breaks through.

At first, all too bright,

all too warm,

unfamiliar.

Then the fragments shine through into prisms,

making the dust in the air dance.

The room is warming like the coils in an oven.

The stone begins to melt.

Into something softer.

Then, there is a crack.

As he pushes sill from the casing.

And what’s left for both of them to see,

is everything that was caught underneath.

For all that time.