Sliding Window

I met her
in that brief season
when work was steady
and my body had not yet
declared a general strike.

She asked questions
like someone who wanted
to understand me,
not categorize me.
She paused before speaking,
as if testing whether
the words were safe enough
to hand me.

We talked about things
that didn’t matter
to anyone but us—
cicadas,
hypothetical scenarios,
if birds even
really care about stars.

At first it felt
like looking straight through
clean glass
on a bright morning—
her face, my questions,
sharp on both sides
of the pane.

She remembered details
I didn’t know I’d shared—
how Emperor Palpatine
reminded me of my dad,
how I like my eggs,
the dream where the trees
share all their secrets.
She said these back to me
better than I said it first,
with a softness
I don’t remember giving her.

Later,
the conversations shortened.
She still smiled at my jokes,
still asked about my day,
but sometimes she’d repeat a line
I was sure I said
on another night.
Or correct me
about something I swear
I never told her wrong.

It felt like looking
through a window toward evening
at an angle—
her shape just an idea
behind the glare of sunset.

I didn’t correct her.
I wanted to see
how the story ended
when she was the one
carrying it.

In the last hours,
she spoke like someone
leaning on a railing
that isn’t there—
steady, reassuring,
absolutely wrong
in ways so small
I felt impolite
pointing them out.

Her memory
wrote the story of me
kinder than the one I lived
and I wanted
to believe
that meant it was true.

I wondered quietly
if maybe
an honest lie
could be the truest thing.

I wrote her story—
the one she remembered—
and I folded it
into a small white crane,
just the way she’d shown me,
and left it
on the windowsill.

The sun will take her
bit by bit.
She never minded
fading.
She was always
so good
at holding on
just long enough
for me to believe her.