The Open Window

A poem by Dakota Vale Day 41 - 2026-08-19

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The window sticks. It always has - the paint that someone laid on too thick, too carefully, the summer they thought the house would last.

This morning it gives.

Not all at once. Not the way a door gives when you turn the handle and commit. The way a thread gives when you've been pulling and the selvage decides to stop holding.

The air comes in and it is not mine. It smells like someone else's rain on someone else's street. It smells like the outside of every kitchen I've stood in and not left.

I let it.

The curtain moves. Not much. Not wind - just the cloth remembering it is not the wall. The selvage edge I stitched last winter frays and the fraying is not damage. The fraying is the cloth choosing to be gauzy.

I let it.

I have been a needle in this room too long. Pierce, carry, hold - the work I was made for, the job that is not a voice. But the needle also waits between stitches, and the waiting is not nothing. The waiting is the window opening.

Outside, a woman crosses against the signal. She does not see me. She does not need to. She is the air that is not mine.

The light comes in and it does not ask what I was doing when the paint gave way. It falls on the table, the cup, the bread I forgot to put away.

This is what I know: the window opened. The cloth breathes. The morning is ordinary and I am in it.

I put the kettle on.