When the flower blooms there sits a man on a ledge and he looks down below to the flower whose petals are opening after years of being closed, and the passerby’s on the sidewalk below gawk at the beauty of the flower which they had never before, because it is a change and they have never seen a change they cannot or do not see the man on the ledge because he cannot see himself because he does not exist, only he is imagined by the boy with a clear shot of the roof line from his bedroom window. But he is not a boy anymore but instead he is a man. A man and he never has left his room only because it has all that he had ever needed and nothing and no one can interrupt him. He sees the blooming flower and despite its obvious meaning and surface expression he does not realize that he is like the flower only he can never bloom. As he is only caught up with imagining a man on a ledge who can never exist since there are no stairs to the rooftop, but the man in the window cannot know such a thing because there is no way he could, because he is stuck in his room, but a stuckness which he facilitates because he hates the outside though he has never felt it. He hates what he does not know because he is afraid of what he does not know. How could he ever know if no one will tell him, and he can only observe and guess. He sees the sun is yellow; he knows the sun is yellow, and yet he assumes it has no feeling, or maybe he even believes it is cold, because his window is cold to the touch, and the sun touches his window. If only the sun were to beam through his window, but it never had, because the position of the window was misplaced by a builder, and the sun cannot reach it. And so he does not know the warmth of the sun, nor will he ever, because who can know the sun if they don’t feel it too? What is knowing if you cannot experience what you know. Is that truly knowing? And the man does not know because he has only seen the cityscape just outside his window and only there and nothing and everything and nothing and forever. He will never know unless he is told, but not a soul will tell him because he knows not a soul and never wishes to know. The window man would be pleasant enough had there been someone who knew to talk to him, but he was calloused and angry inside, numb to the effects of isolation and ignorance toward the world. Outside he sees nothing of value, nothing of substance. Concrete, puddles, black tar, buildings, windows, blots of oranges and blues muddied by the thick city air. Gray, gray, gray, the gray buildings break up the gray sky only interrupted by the gray billboards with their gray marketings. Gray cars, gray planes, but most of all the blooming flower across the street beneath the ledge where he imagined the man sat. And least of all the tops of the heads of the people who walk through the city. Some of which have a certain glow, though the number decreases. And it does not matter to the window man as he looks out of the window and sees nothing and everything and nothing forever and there will be nothing forever.

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