Through the Stained Glass Window

By Chloe Maria Pyrsos

I look for you through the stained glass window. I look to remember the moment you left. I reminisce in the before as much as I am alone in the after. 

Our house has turned cold and far too big. I used to play bossanova and dance around it to fill space. Now, come winter, I cling to blankets like I did your jacket while the bookshelves collect dust.

Nights cold as these remind me of the day you invited me in. I had been standing in the cold for hours. I hoped the fresh air would disinfect me from the boredom I caught inside. I had dressed in ornamental leather gloves and plastic gold. I counted passers-by like pennies. Salvaging for any glimpse of possibility or freedom. My gaze was then lured in by your leadlight. The colors shone a warm and gentle ambience, framing your face. Your green sweater looked like the vines climbing up your door, and your amber hair like the fallen autumn leaves. Just then I knew exactly what you smelt like, old books stained by hot chocolate. The door suddenly opened and I blushed in embarrassment, but you only noticed how I looked so cold. 

Never did you speak a word to me; words were trivial. You listened quietly to my confessions of love and sin and all the ways I managed to entangle them. Within the depths of our darkest conversation you wouldn’t dare pry your light blue eyes away.

Every night you lit a fire I would lay next to it. The heat pressed on every bit of my skin. Your fire hypnotized me; I would forget the world ever frosted over.

I remember you hunched over legal documents. So often I worried you would end up buried in bureaucracy. You sailed away on a sea of work, leaving your tea to go cold and the two coltish cats unfed and lifeless. I struggle to conceive how you could trouble yourself so much with papers and so little with us. Maybe, it is now that you are finally lost at sea. I abhor you forgetting our home.

Since you left I have been so lonely. My mind rots without your impossible anecdotes and unlikely vocabulary. I am less for your disappearance. My blood has frozen me a fool and I doubt spring will ever come again. My hair is dull and my eyes are sunken. The vibrant hues of our window mute further with every passing day.

The fragile leadlight has shattered now that it lost your maintenance, leaving a stark hole of fragility. The ragged edges cut through my nostalgia and leave the wuthering winds unmaimed. I wait for the day I have the courage to patch it up and stop waiting for you to climb through it. My hope for your return is frostbite feeding on my tender heart. I hide from the day it bleeds me dry and turns to a stale bitterness. The same very taste I tried to bleed out of you.

I wonder when you first suspected me, if you suspected me at all. One day you must have felt me as I followed your eyes. Or maybe it was leaving your documents open on the wrong page, or stealing too much warmth from the fire, that revealed me. Maybe it was my presence that finally scared you away. I absolve myself by knowing it was my house first. It was your choice to trade a haunted history for a transient mortgage.

I will be bound by the frost on my walls all of winter, and the hedges of my property by summer. A butterfly’s fleeting flutters will mock my confines. I trust you will find your home in the ocean, and I will sleep as one on a bed for two, forever. 

Now and then I mistake an orange moon for you, shining through my broken stained glass window. The moon paints me a comet through the gaping hole and the surrounding colours paint me a bountiful harvest. The colours turn your violent neglect and passive abandon into an angel's white wings. It is only nights as those that I am hopeful in spite of your disappearance. 

The foundations of this house will rot with me and my stained glass windows will shatter again next storm.

By Chloe Maria Pyrsos