The Window with the Yellow Curtains

The apartment across the street had always been empty.

I could see the entire structure from the window in my bedroom: sun- and time-worn brick, chipped and crooked balconies, like teeth that had forgotten how to bite. However, a particular second-floor window stood out. The bright yellow curtains had been drawn shut for a long time.

The window had not once opened. Not even during the pandemic, when the rest of the neighborhood hung cloth masks and hoped they would dry. I distinctly recall wondering, "Who puts up yellow curtains but never opens the window?"

Then, last spring, my father died.

It wasn’t sudden. Cancer doesn’t believe in surprises, only slow theft. But still, when the hospital called, I forgot how to breathe for a moment. My hands trembled as I held the phone. I remember the way the world sounded after—loud, but far away, like hearing a storm from underwater.

We buried him under a banyan tree, just like he asked.

I went back to my room after the funeral services were over and the condolences had diminished. I had left everything where I found it. the old tea in the mug. my unfinished task list. The residence across the street.

And for the first time in three years, the yellow curtains were gone.

A woman in her sixties, perhaps, stood in their stead. A faded green shawl was draped over her gray hair in a bun. She remained motionless and stared out, not at me but at the world as a whole, as if trying to recall something it had lost.

Every morning for the next week, she’d appear for a few minutes. Just watching. Not doing anything.

I began to expect her, like the news or my coffee.

Then one day, she opened the window.

No grand drama, no burst of music. Just a slow creak as she let the wind in. I almost smiled.

The problem with grief is that it does not knock. It simply shows up, sits silently next to you, and waits. I kept getting the advice to "let yourself feel" and "take my time." However, I was unsure of how I was supposed to feel. Anger? Relief? Guilt?

I sat by my own window one night, unable to sleep. Her light was still on across the street. The curtains danced a little as the window opened. I waved, and I have no idea why I did it.

She didn’t wave back.

But the next morning, there was a paper crane taped to her glass.

We began putting things outside our windows. Notes. Doodles. a bird's nest. once, a teabag that made me laugh. Never mentions. Never speak. merely offerings We were both trying to say, "I'm here too," without having to admit that we were alone, it seemed like.

In those quiet exchanges, I found something unexpected—peace. Not healing, not yet. But the beginning of it.

One rainy afternoon, she put up a photo. Blurry. A man standing beside a lake. I didn’t need to be told—that was her person.

I printed a photo of mine too. Baba, sitting in his garden, half-smiling, holding a mango.

We both kept the photos up for weeks.

And then, one day, she wasn’t there.

The window was closed. Empty.

A week passed. Then two.

Part of me worried. The other part didn’t want to know.

Then came a knock on our door.

A young man stood there with a small parcel. “Are you the one who was doing the window things with my aunt?”

I nodded.

He handed me a book—Rumi’s poetry, pages soft with age. Inside the cover, in careful handwriting:

“Some windows don’t open to let the world in.

They open to let something out.”

—M.

I haven’t seen anyone at that window since.

But I still keep the book on my desk. Sometimes I flip it open at random, like it might speak to whatever ache is inside me that day.

And I think, maybe healing doesn’t always look like moving on.

Sometimes, it just looks like opening a window.