California Quarterly: One Poem

Volume 43, Number 4

How Women View Windows

Most houses have a window

over the kitchen sink

and next to the passenger side of the bed:

a confessional with no priest.

Amber to hold handprints,

Contouring the light.

Consider the fragility

borne of crosshatches

and spider cracks

that fragment perception.

A shard is a synecdoche—

Its original properties intact.

Sunlight makes it a gem

Among stones.

Sometimes, windows divide

a woman from herself, match girl

from debutante, in the reflection

she sees at night.