You are here to be a window

A love poem to someone I once was

Photo by Matthew Jungling on Unsplash

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Return with me now to the glorious days of yesteryear, when if you bought a concert ticket online (or by telephone) it was then sent to you through the mail, a slender slip of cardstock printed in different colors for different performances. And thereby hangs a tale.

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BEFORE THE CONCERT                                    2025


When it came in the mail, my name 
on the envelope and his inside, I propped
the ticket on the kitchen counter near
the window, where the sun would light
his name each morning, every day
for all the weeks until (look, a real date
on a real ticket!) the night I would be
in the same room he was and would hear
that lucent, supple voice fill up 
that room the way the morning sun 
filled up my kitchen. When the date 
arrived at last, and I in careful
concert clothes held out my ticket
to the woman at the door, she stared
at it and then at me. Where did 
you buy this, she demanded, why is it 
this color? Tonight’s tickets are not
this color. Oh, I thought, and fumbled out
some words about the morning sunlight
through my kitchen window, till at last
suspicion faded just enough 
for her to let me in the door, 
and I, forgetting all about her, ran
straight to the washroom, latched
a metal door behind me, soothed
my skittish breath, whispered
to my staccato pulse. Yes,
I promised softly over and over,
yes, you will be in the same room 
but he will not know, you are not here
for him to notice, you are here to be
a window, here to let his voice in,
to let in the light, and that is all.
That is enough. It isn’t hard. Go do
the thing that you were made to do.

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I have such tender, protective feelings for the younger version of me who is the “I” in this poem. For a tangle of reasons she came late to her Fangirl stage (imagine that happening as late as you can, then add ten years), and by the time she got there she was already deeply ambivalent over the conflicting payoffs of being seen and being invisible, still frequently confused about the difference between being present and being noticed. She was terrified by feelings that also exhilarated her; she was abashed at finding herself so bewildered by what her body and mind were up to.

Her Fangirl stage didn’t last long or get wild. She stepped back from a lot, that woman; she had her reasons. And: she went to that concert. Truth be told, after she turned in her faded ticket for the first night of that concert tour, she went back for a rush ticket the next night. And again, the night after that.