The Woman By The Window

(Just another experiment so please bare with me!)

The first time I saw her the ghostly form of her body both terrified and transfixed me to my soul.

True to form she hovered by the grand window in the south-west corner of the room. Her arrow-like fingers pressed into the folds of her crimson dress, her skin the tone of buttermilk, pure, almost translucent.
Closer again and it appeared as though all pigment of colour had been drained from her flesh.
Even her narrowing lips were more akin to weak tea than clichéd roses.

And it pained me to see her that way. The woman devoid of colour and life.
For all her poetic comparisons I could have invented tales of love and loss. I could have spun a web of prejudiced around her hollow existence.

But I would have been lying and it would have been too merciful a fantasy life to dream up.

When all the woman by the window ever knew was the four walls closing in around her that dominated everything in her existence.
The trap of society and its constricting rules and patriarchal values smothered her.
All I could offer was pity and a promise of sunlight. That one day her veins wouldn't glow so violently from beneath virgin skin.

That eventually things would be better and that the curse of a life tainted by orders and ordeals would be born again into the warmth of a days embrace.

Someday I would share with her the world beyond the view of the south-west window...