When the Sky Looks In

Sunlight shines softly through the clouds, casting shadows of my window blinds and the flowers in the windowsill. They add a shimmery layer on top of this open window, this steaming, breathing, fresh-baked loaf of a painting, open and reaching with its canvas weave and brushstrokes, attempting to grasp out at the sky or- open out to it? It is the shape of a window, and it holds an invitation to enter another world in the same way that a window does. I can step through it with my eyes and lie down and daydream in it in the same way that I would with a window. But it is not a window,just like Magritte’s pipe was not a pipe. So the sun-shadows of the window blinds and flowers become the hints that break the illusion, the ephemeral travelers that go where I cannot.