by David Lee
Each spring another window vanished.
Not shattered.
Not boarded over.
Gone.
The frame remained:
a pale rectangle
where sunlight used to enter the body of the house.
My father said
old houses molt.
The dining-room window disappeared first.
Then the one above the sink
where my mother stood peeling potatoes,
watching storms gather themselves
over the soybean fields.
Years later
we ate facing drywall.
The wall accepted forks,
voices,
birthdays.
The light relearned us.
We relearned the dark.
One November morning
I woke to find my bedroom window missing.
Where dawn belonged,
there was only plaster.
Outside still existed.
I knew this
because sparrows kept arguing
in the maple tree,
because rain continued
its patient tapping
on what was no longer there.
Yet every sound arrived altered:
as if the world
had stepped backward
through a closing door.
The last window disappeared
the winter my father died.
Neighbors came carrying casseroles
wrapped in aluminum foil
bright as emergency blankets.
Nobody mentioned the house.
Nobody mentioned
how blind it had become.
Years later,
when the wrecking crew finally came,
they found dozens of windows
buried beneath the foundation.
Stacked carefully.
Glass unbroken.
Each one facing inward,
still looking
for the rooms
that had forgotten them.
David Anson Lee is a retired ophthalmologist, professor, and poet whose work explores memory, identity, landscape, family history, and the uncanny intersections between the ordinary and the mysterious. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Eclectica Magazine, Kinsman Quarterly, SoFloPoJo, Lit Shark, Penumbra, The Jagged Edge, Mouthful of Salt, and other journals. He lives and writes in Texas.
