my neighbor girl
she peaks out her window every now and then. i could pull my blinds down, but i don’t. i think we’re falling in love from afar, even if we’ve never said a word to each other.
my window is large, stretching wide enough to frame half the city skyline. manhattan at night, endless lights flickering like tiny reminders of lives i’ll never know. but somehow, the only light i care about is the soft, red glow spilling from her window.
she occasionally has someone over—a guy, sometimes a girl—but never the same person twice. i watch them cook together, sometimes sit on her couch watching movies. once or twice, i’ve seen them lean into each other, bodies close, silhouettes merging. that’s when i have to look away. i tell myself i don’t want to see it. maybe i don’t want to admit that someone else gets to be close to her while i can only watch from behind this glass.
in the mornings, we both go to the same deli on the corner of 35th st. and 9th ave. we never speak. we never acknowledge each other. it’s our silent ritual, our unspoken game. each time we pass each other in line or brush shoulders by accident, it feels like a small electric shock—a reminder that we exist beyond these windows but are somehow bound by them.
once, after months of this quiet exchange, she smiled at me as i walked past her. “our space belongs only between these windows,” she said softly, almost like she was letting me in on a secret. i didn’t know what to say, so i said nothing. i just nodded and walked out of her life once again, wondering when i would be able to return next. another six months, perhaps?
she’s a ghost in my life—far enough to see, too close to touch. i don’t know her name, her story, or why she seems to haunt my mind like this. all i know is that there’s something unspoken between us, something tethering us across this narrow stretch of country.
maybe, in another time, another place, we wouldn’t be separated by windows or cities or strangers passing through our lives. maybe we could be something real. but for now, we remain exactly what we are: two people falling in love from a distance, caught in a world where the only thing connecting us is a pane of glass and the silent understanding that neither of us can seem to forget the other.
4 helped with the editing , whoops
