The Woman in the Window

by A.J. Finn

I think of him tonight as I stare at the ceiling, feeling dead myself. Dead but not gone, watching life surge forward around me, powerless to intervene.

“My dear girl, you cannot keep bumping your head against reality and saying it is not there.”

Out flew the web, and floated wide; The mirror crack’d from side to side; “I am half-sick of shadows,” cried The Lady of Shalott.

I was born lonely, she’d answered. I wasn’t. I was made lonely.

You’ll notice I’m not asking what made you this way, she said to me. Or, rather, I said it to myself.

I close my eyes. And I open them. And I step into the light.