Arlington Heights Elementary School

by Tim Gilmore, 6/26/2012

Sprinkle Drive. Listed address with the property appraiser is Zero. Perfectly elementary-school. Zero Sprinkle.

Time is child-time. The moment is very short, but it lasts and lasts and lasts. Remember? All that time in the field daisies?

Little boy. Even the eye blinks are slow. And big. As though necessarily so to take in so much.

Six years old, he’s not old enough that he can’t still forget everything around him. He loses himself thus. He loses himself so. Good use of time. He can lose himself in the corner of a window pane so old.

He thinks the window is a window. Within the window is window.

He stares through old panes in old frames, and this is what he thinks:

Window is a window is a window is a window.

The window is in the window.

In the window is something you can’t touch. Like an eye inside an eye. Like a brain inside a brain. A window is an eye and is a brain. Don’t talk to strangers. The window is a stranger.

The window wants you to look through it. The window doesn’t want you to notice it. The window is not just a window. The window acts like it’s showing you things. The window must be hiding something.

Don’t look through the window. Instead, look at the window. Not through. At. And into. Because window waits within window. Watching you. Watch it.