The Top Floor Window

THE TOP FLOOR WINDOW / Christianne Balk Dawn The sun is melting frost on the tarpaper roof next door, so it glistens, as if still wet with Chinese-red paint. From my second-story window, the pitched roof seems to curve as the low, mottled light of early morning moves slowly up the ridge pole. A series of shadows on the west slope of the roof make it seem troughed, like warped plywood. Some starlings emerge from the long cave below the eaves to stand on the gutter with puffed bodies, then suddenly dive down to the lawn, where they strut beneath the trees. The wet ground flickers, as if filled with splinters of glass. Dusk This afternoon the shadows fall in pleated panels, like gauze curtains, gray with age, lowering themselves slowly, between my house and the stucco wall of the house next door. The pebbled, pockmarked wall is beige, and streaked with rust, like a Great Dane's brindle fur. I see a window across from me, pink as the inside of a Bermuda conch. The glass turns cinnabar, then sloughs all color off, like water. It stares for a moment, blind as an empty socket in a skull. As the wall darkens, the window turns ivory, bright 48 · The Missouri Review as an exit of a mine seen from underground, seen from deep within the shaft. Christianne Balk The Missouri Review · 49 ...