Unclosed Windows
Julia heard her own voice for the first time in months. It came out hoarse, stifled, as if forcing its way through a layer of dust that had settled on her vocal cords and the passage of time:
“Good morning.”
It wasn’t an address to anyone. It was a trial step. The voice itself seemed uncertain whether it had the right to sound at all. It felt as though it belonged to another life—one where the bathroom door slammed in the morning, the kettle boiled in the kitchen, and little bare feet ran to show her how the peas had sprouted on damp cotton wool in an old jam jar.
Julia opened her eyes to thick silence. The ceiling—dull, greyish, like a faded sky—hung above her motionless, devoid of any sign of life. The flat was warm, but a faint draught brushed the edge of the curtain. She’d left the window open again. Or maybe not forgotten, but left it that way on purpose. Just in case. In case a child’s laughter drifted in. Or footsteps. Or breathing.
She lay on her back without moving, as if hoping that if she stared upward long enough, a path would appear between the cracks in the plaster. A route that might show her how to step out of this endless grey room—and, more importantly, out of herself.
The kitchen remained untouched. A mug with dried coffee on the windowsill, as if waiting for yesterday to begin again. A browned apple on the cutting board, abandoned like forgotten conversations. And the photo on the fridge: a six-year-old boy in an astronaut costume, grinning so wide and so earnestly, as if he were just about to ask, *”Mum, am I really going to space?”*
She hadn’t touched the picture in over a year. Her hand would hover near it, then stop, afraid to disturb the memory. The magnet holding it up was from a children’s eye clinic—funny, when she thought about it. They’d gone in for *”just a check-up,”* her son complaining about letters that wouldn’t stay still. But in the end… it hadn’t ended with a prescription or glasses. It had ended differently. The kind of ending no one prepares for. The kind with no way back.
By the front door, tiny trainers with blue Velcro straps sat dusty and silent. Unmoving witnesses to time. Julia passed them every day, holding her breath as if knocking them over might make everything collapse. Just a pair of children’s shoes, you’d think. Plastic, fabric, soles. But in truth—an entire life. A small universe compressed into twenty centimetres.
She used to love mornings. Would brew coffee, put music on. Now—hot water with green tea, no sugar, no lemon. The bitterness clung to her throat like unsaid words. Outside, the city slowly stirred: buses, cigarette smoke, a dog barking, neighbours shouting. Life went on, unaware that somewhere nearby, someone had stopped living long ago.
Julia had taught literature. At a college in Liverpool. She adored Chekhov—for the restraint, the pain between the lines, the pauses where she could hide. After… she left. First on sick leave. Then into nothing. Never went back. Couldn’t. And later, didn’t even want to. Reading became unbearable; words tore at her ribcage from the inside.
In spring, a friend dragged her to a support group. The place smelled of cheap vending-machine coffee, the walls greyed by time and other people’s grief. She remembered a woman in a red jumper who’d lost her husband, a twenty-year-old boy who sat clutching his backpack all evening without speaking. No one shouted. But the air rang with pain, like a taut wire.
Julia felt out of place there. As if her loss was too private. Too invisible. No grave, no date, no goodbye. As if she wasn’t allowed to suffer aloud. So she left. Quietly. Never returned.
Sometimes she wrote letters. Never sent them. Just saved them. Her laptop held a folder labelled *Drafts*. She wrote to him.
*”You’d be starting Year Two now. You’d probably hate porridge. We’d argue in the mornings. Or maybe you’d be the quiet type. You’d know what my hair smells like. I’d braid it if you were a girl. But you’re a boy. My astronaut. My ‘Mum, look!’. My hope.”*
Sometimes she didn’t finish. Just put a full stop. No continuation. No explanation.
Today, her voice didn’t come from emptiness, but from somewhere deep. It didn’t plead, call out, or ache. It just was. And suddenly, that was enough.
For the first time in so long, Julia wanted to go outside. Just step out. No purpose. No reason. Just place her foot on pavement that hadn’t felt her tread in years.
She fetched her coat—dusty from disuse—pulled on boots, then paused. Listened to the old floorboards creak beneath her soles. Inside her, a strange trembling. Not fear. Not pain. Something else. As if something were coming back.
She walked to the fridge. Took down the photo. Carefully removed the magnet. Ran a finger over her son’s face, his wide, impossibly alive smile.
“Come on, my astronaut. I need to learn how to live again,” she whispered.
She opened the door. Took a step. Then another.
And for the first time in all these years—she closed the window.
Not from pain. Not from fear. Just… because she understood: now, she could.
And maybe—she had to.
