A man that looks on glass,
On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it pass
– George Herbert
Take me, a woman at a window, how
do I look? Climbing on the sill, press face
and body to the pane. The sea shoots up
like mercury to a line below my eye.
Eight miles at least to the horizon now
I gauge from my new height, but I don’t sweep
the view as if it were a field, I’m caught:
the world out there presents a sheer wall.
Cold arrests me, bars my mouth. Draughts
tighten round my ribs and bind me to
the brittle sheet vibrating in the wind.
Glass fuses with my skin. Its thinness
is no barrier, unmanned
frontier through which I let the sea.