A Viewing Room

Somewhere off the coast, on the first night of fall, it was one in the morning. Somewhere people were curled up in patchy quilts, snoozing. Somewhere a party had ended and young couples were walking home, coats held close to their necks with hopes to ward off a small cold, talking about the evening, about the party, about what they liked about each other. How they’d all pass by, like a train blowing through a railway station at a hundred miles an hour. Somewhere someone was eating soup out of white bowls in a continental climate, the short days unwinding into long, languid nights of black ink and milky stars, the kind of cold air that children blow like faux smoke, laughing at each others red faces.

Here, in the tree, he sat watching, this snowy barn owl in a thick coat of feathers, waiting for the lights to flickers on throughout the various kitchens in the dark, beacons and soft spots to wonder at.

His favorite nights were these. On a Monday when everyone was home in the evenings, he could look inside at what seemed to be the whole world. The small cabin, white paint peeling into ribbons to the left, surrounded by an alcove of trees, tall pines that broke in perfect view in front of a glowing window. The owners dancing in the kitchen, how he held her close as the pot boiled over. The owl wanted to know what it might be like to hold someone during these times, their spindly fingers looking so sure of where to land. If he had hands, he wasn’t sure he’d know what to do with them.

This couple, they came here to escape their life, with a phone that never rings, and the one time how they hid in the hallway as someone knocked. But still, tonight with the steam billowing off the boiling water, they saw each other and clung.

A soft song came on and they swayed. His mother used to sway in the mornings, years ago, turning her back to the sun. They preferred the silken night, sky thick with jeweled stars scattered like a broken dish of cosmos. She’d cover them with her wing, a false narrative of darkness, given by the mother who would’ve given them anything for warmth and another chirp at the sunrise.

This, of course, was before the couple that lived there before had a kid that threw a rock at her leg and cracked the bone, leaving her crying out for her babies on the ground until the kid's parents came and put her out of her misery. The owner’s wife cried, at least there was that, shooing her murderous baby back to the house, not knowing until that moment that he was able to strike an animal without remorse, that he could throw the first stone and also laugh. His mother must be cold now, the ground frozen over and ready to drop soft flakes you opened your mouths to taste. The couple laughed loudly at something that happened while he thought about his mother, the soup now splattered on the floor, and the couple rushing for rags.

To the right lived the quiet couple, the ones he knew from the blue TV light that shaded the ground outside the window in a blue static he could almost taste if he swallowed hard, metallic prickling on the top of the tongue.

The TV was always left on, and along with it a soft ringing he’d often forgot was there until they’d leave for the store or work or school and the world would dial back in stark silence again, every sound now defined by the sharp absence of a high-grade pitch.

The husband would sit in the plush chair he looked too big for, eating sandwiches or TV tray dinners while his wife sat at the table in the other room, her head in her hands so often the small owl couldn’t memorize her face, couldn’t pick her out of a crowd. The woman’s husband couldn’t see her like this, but he could, from his spot in the tree, feeling he knew a secret about her, how sad she seemed crying alone in the kitchen, never eating but sitting awash in that blue static light that cast her long shadow on the kitchen wall. The same static must’ve burned her tongue, too.

He watched from his nest, perched lofty in a bed he could disassemble and recreate again and again if needed, though he liked this view. The dancing in one home, and darkness in the next set about a feeling in his stomach he couldn’t name. Tonight he wanted to move closer, wanted to reach out for her, like how the couple in the left house clung onto each other, though he wasn’t sure she had seen them, too.

Decidedly, he swooped down from his spot hidden on the branch. He landed on the window ledge, wings and beak gently tapping the glass as he moved. She didn’t seem alarmed at the noise, instead getting up and staring on the other side of the glass. She opened the window quickly, a small latch lifted and the window creaking slightly. He could hear the drum of the television, words rounded as they curved the corner on their way from the other room. Noises clearer than he imagined they’d be, though he couldn’t make anything out through the thrum of changing voices and cheering and claps from the television set.

She turned and walked to the cabinet, pulling out a bag of bread, tearing a piece apart with her hands and placing it in her palm. She stared at the slight, living thing in front of her for a moment, her palm extended like she was about to give a blessing, about to anoint. Blessed be the bread and the hands that serve them. He picked quietly, no chirps and clicks, no thank you, for worry he’d scare her or alert her husband to this new visitor.

“A barn owl, huh?” She said to no one but herself, though she was staring deeply at this owl, her chin resting in her palm, now devoid of bread.

“With no barns around here, you must be far from home.” She held out a finger, moving slowly to stroke the back of the owl’s head, the shiver of touch traveling through him.

Tonight there was a slight wind curving its way down the coast, sifting through the pines, causing them to clap together as it made its way down the highway with all the other cars headed out toward other towns with brighter homes and nicer people. But she and him were here. At this window, in this kitchen, staring at each other.

She stroked his head and laughed quietly, “So strange to see you here. Why, aren’t we just two lonely things.”