#57 Looking Out

looking out of the same red window
she’d been looking out for years,
every morning

into the same field
framed in gorse;
the same road
scribbling its way away
into the village.

But when had she begun
to daydream
in the mornings
looking out

about what was already over
instead of what might come…
the music prize she’d won;
the summer Albert loved her.

As if the possibilities
that had once filled
her thoughts

that she might move away
and play the violin
or even marry

had been blown out
like a row of candles
one by one,
no matches in
the drawer.