The windows in this house, painted shut for decades,
I’m scraping away now at old latex, flaking the lead,
peeling back the years to their bare wood beginnings.

Hardware stiff with rust and coated with the effort of
keeping so much in or out, imprints of all the small
fingers that turned the latch or tried to and could not.

I work my blade into the space between stop and go,
the place where movement lies dormant. If I can get
this window open, birds will fly out, I know they will.