The obscure, aquatex glass is cool against my fingertips. I draw the blinds high to see an endless winding of cars below of where I stand. These cars move faster than I can ever move the pen across this page, but inside...almost all noise is muted by the extra thick glass, by my confinement. I am home.

The window distorts the streets and highways in patches, making it difficult to differentiate where one end starts, where the other ends. Like a jigsaw puzzle scrambled, everything outside is misplaced, disjointed. I gaze lovingly, this shiny surface of another world. Clearly, I know those streets and highways, but the glass gently mocks my knowledge of what I ever knew, what I ever recognized. The stained glass cloaks everything, only with shades of cold blue.

More and more, I want to spread my wings and fly. I understand they are feeble. Young, fragile, weak. Carrying the full weight of Life isn't impossible, though undeniably hard. But I finally discover these wings.

A shame, really.

Like a bee, first experiencing the dew of utter sweetness pure and uncontaminated, all harvested under guidance of its own wings; like a hummingbird, facing the boundless skies, new to the taste of northern gales; like a dragon, breaking free from brittle, enchanted sleep; can there be anything more cruel?

Let us drown in desperate conviction in a world of one color. Let us never see, never hear, never feel the rainbow patterns. If the glittering, tinkling fire within an opal's bosom cannot be guarded, let no rocks and dirt be uncovered to reveal its beauty. If no light will even settle once warm upon the surface of a star sapphire, let there be no legends spoken about its three lines of love, hope, and destiny.