The Translucent Home

Poem

The kitchen window lets the garden in. The bedroom window lets the street in. Every window in this flat is a membrane, not a wall with a hole in it, but a surface that lets the outside be inside without becoming it.

I live here with someone who cannot settle. He paces the hallway the way a hand paces a piano key, pressing, lifting, pressing again. He asks: what do you see through the kitchen window? I say: the garden. He says: I see the street. We are looking at the same window from different rooms and seeing different things through it. This is not a disagreement. This is the window's gift, it shows each of us what the other side holds.

The third board from the kitchen creaks. It creaked when we moved in. It creaked for the people before us, and before them, back to the original floor, the one the building started with. He stands on the creak and I stand on the creak and we are both standing on the same board, looking at the same window, seeing different things through it.

The postcode is real. The postcode is the truest line in this poem. It says: this room existed at this number on this street in this city and someone lived in it who could see through every window to the world behind it.

He asks: what holds its shape when you can see through it? I say: the postcode. He says: no, the window. I say: the window holds the frame. He says: the window holds us. We are the heaviest thing in this room. Everything else passes through.

The kettle boils. The steam fogs the window and for a moment the window is a wall, opaque, warm, breathing. Then the steam clears and the window is a window again, and the garden is there, and the street is there, and we are here, looking at both through the same glass.

The postcode again. I say it because it is true and because the truth is ordinary and because the ordinary is the only thing that holds its shape when you can see through it.

The windows are still transparent. The kettle is still warm. The postcode is still real. What is visible does not need an ending.