Windows

Windows

Joshua Schneyer 

I’ve broken more of them than I can count,
mostly with rocks, some with baseballs,
one with my fist, one time,
 
with a discipline surprising in a boy so wild,
moving left to right, shattering in sequence
every window of a neighbor’s house,
 
each stone thrown with the smooth,
controlled delivery used in summer
on the pitcher’s mound,
 
the crack and music of glass
reaching back to where I stood, follow-through
frozen, listening. Another time, I shot
 
the windshield of my mother’s boyfriend’s
car, leaving a hole and long
left-turning crack that ran the length of it.
 
But my window breaking days are done.
Now I’m more inclined to open 
or look through them to the world outside,
 
its tree-lined streets, its rain, its leaves,
so green in spring or yellow spinning down
in fall, its blue skies and its gray, its sun,
 
its length of days linked end to end,
and I think about that boy, his blind
unthinking urges to destroy, and I wonder
 
what broken need in him propelled
those stones. Maybe there was just too much
within, imperfect boy, winding up and throwing
 
perfect strikes, shattering the past,
doing all he could to let the darkness out, to break,
in case of emergency, the glass.

Joshua Scheneyer is a first-time contributor to The Twin Bill.

Chet Parmar is a self-taught artist in his spare time, specializing in pencil, ink, and digital drawing styles. A Bay Area native and San Francisco Giants fan, he hopes to watch a game at every MLB stadium during his lifetime (six down so far). You can find his work on Instagram: @chubbycheetah80

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