What the Glass Holds

The window keeps nothing— only borrows the afternoon, holds it briefly the way water holds a stone's shape for the half-second after the stone is gone.

My grandmother pressed her thumb to glass once watching snow cross the yard like slow forgetting. I was small enough to believe the warmth was coming from the other side.

Certain things are made to be transparent: the hour before a fever breaks, the pause inside an apology, a name you no longer say aloud.

Light enters a room and changes everything and leaves and changes nothing back. The glass stays cold. The afternoon moves on without its portrait.