third floor window

By Chie Theresa Fujioka

The days had been hot, a sudden and unexpected change from the chilly weather I was finally used to. All my life in southern heat and humidity, and now I yearned for the cool air of a breeze. Here, they were not lacking; but I was in the hope of one finding it's way through my screened window and gently sweeping away the dull heat that coated my sweat frosted body. It was good to lay by the window to let the winds touch me, in these summer days.

I'd try to talk to friends far off on my computer, or read a book that some interesting boy had excitedly loaned me, in that bizarre form of loyalty I often found myself in. But I couldn't focus and fell asleep instead.

I awoke with the dry sticky feeling on my tongue, indicative of bad breath, and reminded myself to brush my teeth sometime soon. The sweat had now dried, leaving a somehow immobilizing coating that made me feel rather suffocated and dirty. Maybe it would be a good idea to simply bathe again tonight.

There was always a good view from my window. Well, a good view minus the ugly yellow house just two meters away that swallowed up large mouthfuls of the sky and streams of red and white lights that would fly along the highway into the night. The ugly yellow house was part of me, I faced it each morning as I undressed or dressed at any hour of the morning. Unlike it's nonexistant inhabitants, and anyone else, for that matter, it saw me dressed, naked, awake, asleep. Part of me, I told you.

The sun was just beginning to set, a faint purple-pink ribbon rimming a recently acquired cloud. The light barely edged over the obstructive roof of the yellow house. I watched what I could see of the sky for a while, in a daze, really. How long until the sunset would find it's full beauty? Would it last? Were I to see the bold colors, would I search for colors brighter to be painted with time, only to lose them? Would I know when the blossom of sunset had reached the peak of it's glory. Could it vanish before I knew? I pulled out my friends digital camera, and placed it on my pillow as I rearranged the few items on my window sill.

A bolt of memory would flash across me as I touched each thing, my fingers acknowledging their familiar curves. There was the plastic fan I bought with Cameron in Japan. A little switch on the side would send green light running up the spines. My diary... I placed the green duck atop it. Such a frivolity, my green rubber duck with small black rubber horns; it was a present from someone special, and in a way, from someone special to him. There was something soothing about it. I'd put it back afterwards. He liked it there.

The screen opened far more easily than it had the first time. It had become accustomed to opening with each turn of my mood, and now did so without complaint. There were flower petals caught in the metal frame... little faintly green petals that grew in fragrant clumps on trees each spring. They had been floating on the wind all day, catching gold from the yellow sun overhead like snowflakes should but don't. When it snows, there is no sun to watch the flakes fall. The fluttering dance had made the day surreal, a day you find in a postcard, or tucked between the pages of a fiction. How funny.

Many of the petals had already curled in their browning edges.

Holding the camera out the window, and careful not to drop it to the ground three floors below, I tried to capture the yet subtle colors. But they were beyond the eye of the machine, lost on its understanding. Perhaps when the sunset had reached its fullest, perhaps then it could see and remember. I paused as I touched the screen to close it, and put the camera down in a safe place. Edging my legs over the sill, I stared out into the sky. I had often found a thrill here, the air all around me and the thin strings of probability sustaining my life. Flirting, in some deep somber way.

A small smile, no. Perhaps the sunset was not as beautiful as it would be. I could wait. Maybe take a picture. I closed the screen, crushing a few petals between the metal ribs.

The pink had grown irridescent and strong, the flavor of my roommate's livejournal, but had not the great spectrum I had often before witnessed on my way to art class months earlier. I had no way to capture those fleeting colors then, now I did. But surely there was more.

I waited. I hoped.

The sun had painted all it would. The work had been hung on walls of sky, for the world to behold. And as the gallery closed, only a distant pinkgrey memory was left. The sky began to darken and there was nothing, nothing more.

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