From Behind My Window

I’ve sat here, in this window, writing for sixty-five years. At least, I’ve been sitting here for as long as I can remember. I’ve spent my entire life watching the people of this little rural town, my town, and writing down every little detail. I know everything about every person that walks my streets, although I have never met one of them.

My mother hid me away from the world. She always told me that I was special, that my words were a gift from heaven, but she was really more afraid of the world that broke her heart. So often I would beg her to allow me to walk the cobbled sidewalks, or to sit and write in the town square. She never relented on her decision to keep me prisoner in our slat-board fortress though.

I learned all about the character of each of my fellow townsmen. I wish they were my fellow townsmen. The town baker was in love with the town florist. He was too self-conscious to ever tell her though. He would always bake a single roll in his baker’s dozen in the shape of a heart, but would always eat it as he tried to work up the courage to tell her. Although, it was probably more of a security thing, his eating, I mean.

The town florist always flirted with the owner of the town’s hardware store, although she couldn’t help but to stare at the baker for the majority of the day.

I knew them all, probably more intimately than they knew themselves, at least more honestly than they were willing to be with themselves. This my mother feared, because intimacy is vulnerability. Intimacy ruined her life, and now here I am simply a face in a window and an author behind a page.

Look for my words to be spread across bindings. You might even find that I know you too.