WINDOWS OPEN

 

Windows Open

We slept, always, with the windows flung wide,

The night spilling in like a guest we’d long invited,

Its breath heavy with the pulse of the world beyond—

A tapestry woven from sounds we knew by heart.  

Out back, the beagle raised his voice,

A lonesome howl at the flicker of a shadow,

Or the rustle of leaves in the dark,

His song a thread tying us to the wild edge of home.

And just beyond the sill, the cardinal birds,

Their sharp, sweet notes piercing the early gray,

A call that tugged me awake, eyes tracing the ceiling,

While you lay still, lost in the cradle of their tune.  

How we waited for the rain,

And oh, how we loved it when it came—

That September, it arrived like a promise kept,

A whisper at first, tapping the glass,

Then a rush, a chorus against the roof,

The air turning sharp with the scent of soaked earth.

The room softened,

Curtains swaying with the damp breeze,

Sheets cool against our skin,

And we, two figures in the storm’s glow,

Watched the world blur beyond our walls.  

No words needed to fill the space,

Just the weight of our gazes locking,

A quiet challenge in the flicker of lightning—

To rise, to feel, to meet each other

At the edge of something vast and unspoken.

Relief washed in with the rain,

A balm for the heat of days gone by,

Yet fear lingered too,

A shadow cast by the storm’s wild heart,

Or perhaps by the depths we glimpsed in ourselves.  

Your breathing matched the rain’s steady fall,

A rhythm I could lean into,

While the beagle’s cries faded to a hush,

The cardinals folded their wings against the downpour,

And the night drew tight around us,

A cocoon of sound and stillness.  

This bedroom, our fortress,

Held us safe within its four walls,

A haven where the chatter of the day—

The petty worries, the endless noise—

Could find no foothold, no voice.

Here, the mundane dissolved,

And all that remained was the truth of us,

Carried in the silence we wove together.  

The rain became our language,

Its cadence speaking where we did not,

Murmuring of trust, of daring,

Of the heights we climbed in each other’s eyes.

It painted the night with its silver threads,

Binding us closer in the shelter of this room,

Where time paused, and the world held its breath.  

When the storm drifted away,

Leaving only the drip of water from the eaves,

And the faint perfume of wet grass in its wake,

We lay there, tracing shadows on the walls,

Knowing this space, this moment,

Was a gift we’d carved from the chaos—

A quiet so deep it could carry us forward,