The Wind at My Window

The wind always finds a way.

It tapped gently at my window that morning, soft as a hesitant knock. I paused, pen hovering over my journal, and listened. There was no urgency in its rhythm, only a persistent insistence—as if it carried a question meant for me alone. I shivered and pulled my sweater tighter around my shoulders, the room’s dim light feeling suddenly inadequate against the chill that pressed against the glass.

I wondered if I should answer. To open the window just a fraction, perhaps, and acknowledge the presence that had been tapping there for days. Each rapping felt like an invitation, a coaxing. But the wind, I realized, is never simple. It is neither companion nor guide. To follow it, I might be carried anywhere. Heaven above, hell below, across lands I have never seen—across deserts and glaciers alike, in search of truths I might not be ready to face.

I imagined the wind as a courier of destinies. Perhaps it wanted me to bear brothers-in-arms home from battlefields I had only visited in dreams. Perhaps it wanted me to leave behind the familiar current of my own thoughts, to float along rivers of others’ sorrows. The thought made my chest tighten. I liked the currents I knew. They were quiet, safe, predictable. But the wind’s tapping promised something else: motion, change, possibility.

So I did what I often do when faced with uncertainty: I questioned it.

“What do you want?” I whispered, as though the pane of glass could hear me. The room answered only with a subtle shiver, the curtains fluttering like timid wings. And still, the tapping continued.

I thought of distant landscapes, the wind carrying me over glaciers so vast they glimmered like frozen oceans. I imagined the crisp notes of air singing against my ears, carrying melodies I had never learned. Or perhaps it would take me to weep beneath a willow, its leaves dripping with sorrow and memory. Or maybe—more frighteningly—it would sweep me across endless deserts, the sun scorching, sand burning, asking me to dance with it in a rhythm I could not follow. And yet, in each vision, I sensed a strange comfort: that in leaving my familiar walls, I might find some fragment of freedom.

And then, almost as if to tease me further, the wind softened. It shifted, coaxing rather than demanding. I imagined it alighting like a crow, dark wings brushing against the corners of my room, seeking only company. Perhaps it desired nothing more than to share its journey with someone willing to watch and listen. Perhaps it wanted the warmth of a hospitable hearth, the rare kindness that a home could offer to a stranger passing through.

I smiled at the thought, imagining the wind curling itself around a chair, settling by the fire with me, silent but present. It could shatter the glass like nothing if it chose. I knew that. But it seemed patient. Curious. Waiting for me to decide.

I sat at the window, resting my forehead against the cool pane. Outside, the wind seemed to pulse with a quiet expectation. My mind churned with questions: Should I open the window? Should I let it in, even a fraction? What could I give it? What would it take from me?

And then, in a sudden, fleeting clarity, I realized that perhaps answering was not about action but attention. Perhaps to “answer” the wind was only to listen, to recognize its presence, to honor the gentle insistence it brought with it. To acknowledge it, not with grand gestures, but with quiet awareness.

I lifted the latch and cracked the window open just enough to let the air slip through. It was cold, biting my cheeks, but it carried something else too: a whisper of possibility. I felt it swirl through the room, brushing against the pages of my journal, against the mug of cold tea I had abandoned hours ago, against the small lamp that flickered in uncertain welcome.

And in that moment, the wind seemed to sigh—a sigh that was neither relief nor frustration, but simply acknowledgment. I did not feel carried away, nor threatened. I felt accompanied.

I returned to my chair, pen in hand, and let the wind settle at the edge of the room. I wrote slowly, deliberately, each word a bridge between the safety of my thoughts and the vast unknown that pressed just beyond the glass. It rapped again, softly, and I answered without moving from my place: by listening, by letting it be, by letting it ask its questions even when I had no answers.

Later, when the wind had passed, leaving only the faint shiver in the curtains and the distant echo of its tapping, I realized that it had not asked me to go anywhere at all. It had only asked me to be present, to attend to its voice, and in doing so, I had followed it farther than any journey could have carried me.

The wind is still asking something, I know. I do not know what. Perhaps I never will. But sometimes, that is enough.

And so, each morning, when it raps gently on my old window, I do not fear where it might ask me to go. I only wonder, quietly, if I might be ready to listen again.