The Window

Just beyond the tree, beyond the fence, close to the grey clouds that hung almost to the earth, a boy sat on another tree's stump. Beneath his crossed legs that he moved up and down rhythmically, under his bright red, Superman shorts, inscribed in the stump, a symbol which we could not see. We reasoned that this boy, hidden behind the hill, past the fence, was some kind of sign for us. The clouds molted clouds. The barren tree stood in our vision and we reasoned that perhaps we could have seen the boy if the tree had not been there.

The boy held in his hands a bird, we thought. A sparrow. The sparrow was frightened but not of the little boy. The boy in the cape looked smaller now. His sandy hair grew into his scalp and we wondered if it hurt. The sparrow grew old faster than the boy grew young and we reasoned that the sparrow was frightened of growing old. We put our arms around one another and watched the clouds molt in the sky.

The boy was then nothing but a pool of blood and perhaps a beating heart on the tree stump and the clouds had multiplied so they covered the entire sky and dipped to the ground shrouding the tree until it looked like a rib cage. We closed our curtains.