The Woman and the Window

It’s the stillness that gets me, the kind you have to earn by breaking. The kind that comes after a long unraveling moment of silence, but not peaceful. I noticed she has her face buried in her hands, yet her reflection is unnervingly alert, like a second self watching the first from behind the glass. Both are silent. One is breathing. The other is holding her breath.

We are both sitting down inside the bus, on the 190 towards town, a glance at that kind of life. It might as well be a vessel between states of being, between here and wherever she’s just come from, between goodbye and not-yet-arrived. Her hair clipped back, her hands bare but for two slim rings that catch the soft morning light. They gleam like the residue of promises. Small ones, maybe even broken ones. Perhaps she's already heartbroken like everyone else.

Outside, the world blurs. You can almost feel the window vibrating against her skin, movement turning into a ghost and becoming the background hum of memory. Trees pass by us half-remembered. A road will decide to forget our name the moment we leave.

What is it we’re trying to see when we stare so hard out of these large windows? Are we looking for proof that we were here, or for something that might give us permission to leave? And which part of her is real, the one inside the bus, or the one reflected back to her? She has her hand up like a prayer, or a shield. She could be whispering a goodbye. She could be begging the world to slow down.

Or maybe she's grieving. I'm told there’s a choreography to grief, though nobody teaches it to you. You just wake up one day and start moving differently. More slowly. Less certainly. Like walking through water that remembers you before you learned how to swim. And maybe that’s what this is.

A woman in between movements. Between the body she once lived in and the one she’s still trying to trust. Accompanied by a silence that soothes and suffocates us at the same time.

I wanted to take the photograph, even if it doesn’t offer any kind of resolution for her, or for the both of us. Only recognition. A moment suspended like breath on glass. I know nothing about her story. But somehow, we might have a good guess.

Because we’ve all been there too. Pressed against a window, sitting on the bus.

Not looking out, but rather - looking in.