Twenty-First Day

God, a window. Just simple things. The sun, the air, even rain, or wind. Oh! The wind. I mentioned it yesterday merely in passing – ‘merely in passing’, like some casual drinks party aside – ‘oh yes, very good, a window!’ – but it has increasingly now become something of an obsession.

It’s only been a day, but with very little in the way of exterior stimulation a single thought rapidly begins to dominate. I will the wall into transparency. When I was outside, before this, before I... if ever I became hungry I used to tease myself by imagining what I would eat if I could have anything in the world. Anything I wanted in the world. I'm driving across the country with no option but interminable service station synth-food, and I imagine. What would I have? I remember the deep fried salt-and-pepper eel I had in Vietnam, crisp then immediate gooey squelch. Fat and salty bite. Or the perfect Normandy ham in a cheaply tableclothed farmstead. I focus on these to drive myself a little mad, a minor form of self-torment, a little fun test of sanity in a sane normal world.

Here in this box I feel no need for such a test. And yet I'm doing it anyway – there’s nothing else here. How might this window look? Glass perhaps slightly yellowed, slightly warped with age. Diagonal criss-cross lead strips keep this old glass in place. It rattles a little in a buffety gust of wind, but remains firm. Upon the aged white ledge, a child’s money box, hexagonal and heavy with hoarded pennies, a toy racing car, a slumped bear with jaunty red felt hat. This is just the bedroom of my childhood. Long gone now.

And the view? What view? Not the silken willow branches I recall. Not here through this half-remembered, half-imagined window. Through this is only windy cloudy grey. How high up are we? Above the canopy. Above the parapet. This is not the view I want. Tugging and clawing at my own imagination, I cannot imagine what I will. I will the willow. But it simply won’t came.

I screw my mind shut and open my eyes. Well? Wall.