Looking Out

At some point then,
inside herself,
she must have turned around
without noticing
until today,

looking out of the same red window
she’d been looking out for years,
every morning,

into the same field,
framed in gorse;
the same road
scribbling its way away
into the village.

But when had she begun
to daydream,
in the mornings
looking out,

about what was already over
instead of what might come…
the music prize she’d won;
the summer Albert loved her.

As if the possibilities
that had once filled
her thoughts…

that she might move away
and play the violin,
or even marry,

had been blown out
like a row of candles,
one by one;
no matches in
the drawer.