Ailleurs

Fenêtre

Once, there was a boy who had a window where his heart should be.

Not in a tragic way. Not in a way that made people whisper. It was just there. Framed in bone, trimmed in a little bit of light. Sometimes birds would land on the sill. Sometimes music from somewhere else would drift in, smelling like lemons or snow.

He didn’t ask for the window. It arrived one morning when he was seven, the same day his goldfish disappeared without a splash. He pressed his hand to his chest, expecting the usual thump, and instead felt breeze.

The grown-ups told him not to worry. “Your heart is probably just hiding,” they said. “It’ll come back when it’s ready.” But it didn’t. And honestly, he didn’t miss it.

Because the window it let him see things.

Not things that were happening, exactly. Things that could . A cat giving a sermon to a row of chairs. A grandmother pouring tea into a river. A red balloon with terrible advice.

The boy grew older. People said he was odd, but not in the kind of way that hurts. More like: “Oh, him? He’s the one with the window. You’ll like him.”

And they did.

They liked the way he listened. The way he always knew when someone needed to hear about a cloud shaped like a carousel, or how oranges make excellent apologies.

He became the kind of person you go to when you forget what kindness feels like.

Because the window was always open, and everything good had a way of finding it.

He never got a heart back. But he didn’t need one.

What he had was better:

A place where the world could come in and sit quietly beside him, no matter how strange the day had been.

.

Porte

Once, there was a girl who had a door where her mouth should be. Small, neat, wooden. Painted the color of tea left too long in the cup. It didn’t swing open when she spoke, because she didn’t speak. It didn’t open at all, not that anyone saw.

The hinges were brass, delicate, and never rusted. There was a little keyhole, but no key. Sometimes, when she yawned, it creaked slightly, like furniture settling in an old house.

She never explained it. People didn’t ask often. And when they did, they never asked twice.

She ate like everyone else. Somehow. She laughed, quietly, the kind you feel more than hear. When she was younger, someone tried to make her sing in music class. She stood there, still as a book no one opens, until the teacher moved on.

She was not silent, exactly. She just made herself known in other ways. When someone was sad, she would appear beside them, holding out a napkin or a pencil or a seed. Something small that felt like a sentence: a thimble full of thunder, a postage stamp that smelled like someone else’s childhood, a feather too heavy to lift.

People said she was a good listener, but no one remembered what she looked like while listening.

There were theories, of course. A boy once said he thought there was a whole library behind the door. Another swore he heard wind when she was thinking. One girl claimed the door was locked because it kept dreams inside, and if she opened it, they’d all come flying out and forget where to land. Someone else believed it was the entrance to a room where old songs slept.

The girl never confirmed anything.

She wrote things down, when it mattered. Not long notes. Just what was needed. Be careful. That cat has been following you. Today is a watermelon day.

People always understood what she meant.

She had friends, though no one could say how they became friends. They just were. They met her once, and from that moment on, she was included. She played games, she held secrets, she gave very good gifts.

Once, for a birthday, she handed someone a folded piece of paper. Inside was a drawing of a cupboard with something glowing inside it. She never explained what. The girl kept it in her wallet for years.

As she grew, the door stayed the same. Never larger. Never smaller. Never opened.

She didn’t mind. There were other ways to say things. Other ways to be heard.

She never knocked on it. Not even once.