Diving Through Windows

I dwell in Possibilit y — / A fairer House than Prose — / More numerous of Windows — / Superior — for Doors — —Emily Dickinson

My wife and I live in a 1907 Craftsman bungalow with original crown glass windows. They were hand-blown in an era long before perfectly flat, mass-produced panes. Their ripples and slumps distort the trees outside and the afternoon sunlight that streams in near my desk. It’s mid-July, just a few weeks after a bomb threat forced the evacuation of Evergreen State College, where I spent the year as a visiting faculty member. As I work, my wife listens to news about possible criminal acts at the highest levels of government. I’m transfixed by this political upheaval—but also by the way our old windows transform the sun’s rays into braided flames of light on the hardwood floor.

A first-year MFA student in my creative nonfiction workshop