Your window is gone

I was standing at the airport bookstore, in between layovers, trying to choose an interesting cover from the shelves, when I saw it lying there. The book she had said was worth reading a million times over. I didn't pick it up. No. The things she touched, sear through the membranes of my conscience. Like a brand that is only hers. She had come into my life like a raging hurricane. And disappeared like a meteor shower in the sky, with no traces left. I have nothing of hers with me. Yet I have everything of hers in floating whispers. The stories she read, and re-read to me. The chocolate she nibbled on when reading. All of it. And no, I do not touch them on neutral shelves in transit lounges. Lest they conjure her up at that very instant. Sometimes, I do not know whether I am more scared of my own reality or her window of perspectives. For once in my meticulously planned existence, something had felt real. So real that I wish I could frame pieces like postcards in neat little black frames. To be displayed, sprawled across my walls. Your window is gone you know, she used to say. I, like certain windows that stay irretrievably shuttered, jammed on rusted hinges.