The Young Girl in the Window

I watched her that morning.

The old lady in the window.

Windless and cold is how the day began.
The image in my eyes, 
watched the dim winter sunrise.
Its relunctant light cast a blue tint 
on the blanket of snow 

Still, that blanket embraced 
the darkness of the night.

Yet her image in that window,
sitting at a table,
alone in the corner, 
warmed my frigid soul. 

That golden warmth,
the light within the room 
bathed her image
as if a sepia pose,
something, 
from many years past.

As the sun rose, 
she was in her twilight.
The lines in her face, 
numerous as they were,
expressed her loneliness. 

She sat there,
reaching with a shaking hand 
for her cup of tea,
and looked up at nothing.

That is when I saw 
the gleam in her orphaned eyes. 
Somehow hope remained.

No friends. 
No family.
A husband long since passed,
She lifted the teacup, 
gingerly, 
to her wrinkled parsed lips 
and relished the instant.

It occurred to me suddenly; 
each moment was her gift,

a gift to her, 
a gift to me.

My imagination filled me,
melting the cold. 

I saw her as she saw herself,
the little girl within came alive.
A tear touched the corner of my eye.

Her life was continuous.
It had no chapters.
It skipped no pages.

The youth that died within me,
Long ago,
would have dismissed her.
Much as her family 
seems to have done.
“An old lady”.
Presumed always old,
Just her role in a young naïve,
fearful existence.

So mysterious were the final chapters
of one’s own life 
at so young an age,
one flings it off 
like dandruff from one’s collar, 
a nuisance to be shunned,
avoided,
cast to a home that can
“take care of her”.

“Just an old lady.”

But now, with grown eyes, I see her
As she sees herself, 
that little girl
who has experienced so much.

She has seen birth and death,
joy and pain.
witnessed history unfold;
years of banality felt.

She played the coquette,
Flirting for a mate,
Eyes bedazzled, mascara thick,
She applied her beauty and won.

She coupled and conceived,
birthed and nurtured,
lived life through her offspring
and watched as they themselves
discovered all that she had, 
and some she had not.

That little girl, 
fascinated by life,
now sits alone, 
relishing the warmth
of the tea down her throat, 
savoring
each moment 
with no one to share.

Except the stranger in the cold,
himself becoming old,
realizing at once,

Life carries on.