Windows

Before I moved to my next patient
she and I framed what little opening we could find.

Her father, she said, had taught her to look for windows—
in that moment I glanced at the clinic blinds—
and when his life’s shades were drawn
she resolved at last to leave her home
to seek something more for her young family.

So her bus had crept north
while her infant slept in her arms
her mind a mixed sky of fear and hope
her head rattling against a single pane
that by dawn her breath made a canvas of tears.

Later she had peered
through bullet resistant plexiglass
spoke through stainless steel louvers
and wondered what the
dour gentleman at the bus station
would do with her anxiety.

Yet she kept looking for “windows”
and by that she meant “opportunities,”
the sort that ticket agent offered when,
seeing something of himself in her,
he brightened and walked her across the hall
to show her a notice, numbers she could call
for help with housing and her son’s first appointment.

And when she found me, her child’s physician,
pausing to inquire about her condition—
whether she takes vitamins, if she has been able to sleep at night—
she at last met my eye and began to share things about which
I had not known and all this, about which I had not known to ask.