Travels Beyond the Window

By Jade Ingalls

Poetry, Arlington County Detention Facility/Heard/OAR writing contest, October 2023

As I fixed my gaze beyond the tall, narrow barred window, my eyes became lost within an endless depth of the blackest night ….  The sole glimmer of life radiated in the form of a luminous beam, as the distant trace of moon reached through the shadows of the deep, gracefully piercing the darkness …. The beam crawled slowly toward me, gradually swallowing the surrounding night within its soft, gentle glow, breaking into shivers of light, dancing before the windows of my soul ….

Consciousness became ambiguous, my prison drifted away, the night was but a memory, as it faded into day ….  As I climbed beyond the clouds, my eyes beheld but clues, of a world I’d never seen before, but somehow I still knew.  The majestic scenery swirled beneath me, like a living picture frame, in colors so familiar, yet none that I could name.

Then without a warning, the picture frame recedes, like a flower quickly fading, like a vapor in the wind.  At that moment, the flowing beam of silvery moonlight, upon the night again descends, as my travels beyond the window sadly come to end …