Outside my window

As my fingers type away with what’s on my mind, my heart quickly races back to the little boy running around in his tiny shoes. He runs on the empty ground nearby playing with his pet dog. I stop typing for a moment and get up to peer outside my kitchen window.

Moving to this place 3 years ago, made me feel sad. I purely went by the appearance of the locality and the layout of the apartment only to reject it in a blink of an eye. However, 3 years later, I feel cozy because life’s best memories have happened here.

A house once stood tall on the nearby empty ground. Old and abandoned, it looked like a shipwreck. A tattered gate prevented strangers from entering the plot. I would stand in my kitchen every morning preparing my coffee and occasionally crane my neck to see if I would be lucky enough to even catch a glimpse of a neighbor. 

At one point, I thought the house was haunted. In the late hours of the night, as I would tip-toe into my kitchen for a glass of water, I would force myself to not look outside the window terrified that I would find a ghost walking across the room with a candle in hand. But I never saw one.

I wondered why anyone would leave their home unattended. I imagined the kind of people who lived there, what lives they might have led and even made up mock memories in my head. A house-warming, birth of kids, graduation get-togethers, birthday parties, home renovations and what not.

And then one wintery morning, huge vehicles entered the premise and made the space their home for the next 5 days. Construction workers would hammer here and there to tear the roof apart, or pick up broken logs and lug them out. All the remains within the home were picked carelessly and thrown into garbage bags. 

Once the belongings in the house had been cleared, a huge bull-dozer brought the house down while constantly beeping away. I looked on as the pillars of the house fell, then the wooden roof and finally the walls of the rooms until there remained no proof of a house. 

Watching the sight of a broken house made me restless but I consoled myself with the thought that now a new family would come back to build their home right here. Soon, there would be good memories to reminisce about. This end only meant a new beginning. I waited and waited for months expecting and hoping that soon there would be another home.

But no one came. And there never was another home. 

Now, all the sights I find on the empty ground are kids playing during the holidays, people walking their dogs int the afternoons, squirrels chasing each other for hours and birds pecking away in the search for food.

Seasons change and so does this empty ground. It stands barren in the winters, and turns lush green in spring. The place has it’s own charm in the fall with multihued leaves strewn everywhere. 

My friends who stop-by never fail to take a view out this window and exclaim how peaceful it looks outside. But, every time I look out the window, I imagine the old home standing tall and ponder about the memories that lasted there.

What’s the view like outside your window ?

**Linking with Day 5 of the #BarAThon Challenge  from 1st to 7th August 2016 
and Friday Reflections - What can you see outside your window?**

Yours' truly,