Window Mail
By Laura Stanfill
I make art for a man I haven’t met. He can’t see what I bring. He can’t even touch my work, because I tape each piece to the outside of his retirement home window.
What kind of artist makes art that cannot be seen?
Since my early twenties, I have said, I am not a poet, but . . . and then produced a poem. The distance inherent in that comma—the pause between I am not and but—feels like an essential break. A space between me, not a poet, and the words on the page that adhere to a particular form that might be called a poem.
In 2020, I submitted two poems to a journal. The editor accepted one, then nominated it for a Pushcart. It’s not an editor or the potential for rejection that devalues what I create. It’s me, having predefined what I can do, what I cannot.
The recipient of my window cards goes by AJ. He’s a father and grandfather. I know his son, Ken. That’s how I have confirmed my notes are welcomed. Ken reports back to me. Tells me when each is found.
Pre-pandemic, AJ played Bingo and enjoyed communal meals. Now he spends his days alone, behind a closed door, as safe as possible from the virus. The metal legs of a walker sit by the window when I lean forward and press a length of tape against the glass.
What kind of artist makes art that cannot be seen?
I have always given friends handmade cards and gifts. A smudged line, a loose stitch, handwriting that hurries. The accompanying notes often verge on apology. I am not an artist, but here is something . . .
Last summer, the New York Times published a piece of my art alongside an article on correspondence during the pandemic.
You can’t say you’re not an artist anymore, my husband told me.
It takes double negatives, the New York Times, and taping my art to AJ’s window for me to change my language about myself. Perhaps that’s the kind of artist I am. Perhaps that’s the kind of poet. One who shuns labels and keeps returning to the work. One who values the making over the having made.
The sun and wind and rain alter the papers I leave until Ken comes to visit. He stands outside (in the sun, in the wind, in the rain) and peels my tape off the window glass. He calls his father on the phone from the other side of the window to read my words aloud. Then Ken adds my latest missive to the bundle of clean laundry and groceries he passes along to the staff for delivery to his father.
Ken has told me an aide posts my window mail on AJ’s fridge. As the months pass, a collection grows. An imperfect private gallery. My art keeps a man company as he sits through days and nights, waiting for the door to open.
You are in there and I am out here.
Hello.
Laura Stanfill's (she/her) debut novel is forthcoming from Lanternfish Press in spring 2022. She's a neurodivergent author and the publisher of Forest Avenue Press, which she founded in 2012. She believes in indie bookstores and wishes on them like stars.