The light by the window
She never planned for it to become a ritual.
It started on a Tuesday in late September, when the light outside the east-facing window first began to shift—no longer bold with summer confidence, but softer, slanted, almost uncertain. The mug of tea was incidental at first. But the next day, she reached for it again. And again the day after that.
Three days is all it takes, they say, for something to begin settling in the body as rhythm.
By the end of the second week, the tea was part of a small procession: tea, chair, window. She never opened the window. Just watched through the wavy glass as the maple turned itself slowly gold.
She wasn't heartbroken. Not exactly.
That would have been simpler. Cleaner. She might have cried, or slept long hours, or cut her hair, as people do when an ending is certain.
But this wasn't that.
This was the confusion of inconsistent closeness. The slow erosion of something that had once been warm, and maybe still was, sometimes. He hadn’t left. Not fully. And that made it harder.
The mixed signals kept her tied in the half-light of what-ifs.
She knew the language for it—intermittent reinforcement, preoccupied attachment, ambivalent bonding—but language didn’t shield her from longing. It only let her name it while it bloomed.
“Do not be dismayed if the senses betray you.
They were never the ones sent to lead you.”
— Amma Syncletica
The ritual held. Mornings, mostly. Not every day. But often enough.
She didn’t journal. That had started to feel performative. Instead, she let the tea cool beside her and watched the way the shadow from the window lattice made its slow march across the floor.
There were days she imagined calling him. Just to say hi. Or to apologize for something not clearly hers. She often wondered whether her longing was actually for him, or for the version of herself that felt seen when he was attentive.
That part was murky.
The need for clarity—the itch to make meaning—battled with her growing understanding that some parts of love, especially early ones, are not supposed to be understood. They are meant to be held with soft eyes, then let go.
October deepened. She switched from green tea to black.
And then, curiously, to coffee. French press, not drip.
The change was not symbolic. Or maybe it was. She didn’t analyze it.
The body had its own intelligence.
She had once read that attachment begins with co-regulated rhythms—heartbeat against heartbeat, breath syncing to another’s breath. But it ends, if it ends well, with the return to self-regulation. Not aloneness. But steadiness.
That thought stayed with her longer than she expected.
By early November, she had rearranged the furniture.
Not dramatically. Just enough to change the feel of the room. The chair no longer faced the window, but angled slightly toward the bookshelf. She’d taken down the framed photo that had once made her feel something—soft, hopeful—but now only asked questions she didn’t want to answer.
One morning, stirring the coffee absentmindedly, she realized she hadn’t thought of him in two days. That surprised her.
It wasn’t absence she felt. It was the quiet rearranging of presence.
The ache had become less sharp. Not gone, but thinned out. Woven into the rhythm of her days like the scent of wood smoke outside—always there, but not piercing.
“A person is shaped by what they return to.”
— Abba Poemen
She did not resolve anything. That wasn't the point.
But she did begin answering texts a little more slowly. Not to punish. Just to observe what it felt like to respond from centeredness rather than anticipation.
She spent more time with friends who spoke slowly. Who left silences where thinking could grow.
She downloaded an app to identify bird songs. She learned that the sharp two-note call in the morning was a chickadee.
One afternoon, she found herself whittling a small piece of driftwood she’d found on a walk. She didn’t know why. It became something like a spoon, but not quite.
She left it on the sill near the window.
The light had changed again.
Now it came later in the morning, and it pooled low on the floor, gold and thick and utterly indifferent to whether or not she was watching.
But she was watching.
And somehow, that small act carried its own quiet weight—like something placed gently in the center of the table, waiting for when she was ready.