Alle sat at the small wooden table by the window, her elbows resting on its cool surface, fingers loosely wrapped around a half-empty cup of tea. Outside, the evening was softening into something fragile and beautiful. The sky wore a wash of pink and yellow, the last light of the sun thinning at the edges as if the day itself were reluctantly letting go. Somewhere beyond the roofs and treetops, the moon waited, pale and patient, ready to claim the sky and scatter it with stars.
Below her apartment, the playground pulsed with life. Children ran in crooked lines, their laughter spilling over the rusted swings and bright plastic slides. A boy with dusty knees chased a girl with two flying braids, both of them shrieking with a joy that belonged only to those who had not yet learned to be afraid. On the bench nearby, a cluster of mothers watched, their conversations rising and falling like a gentle tide. One woman knelt in the dirt, pulling her daughter close to clean the mud from the child's pants, smiling as if every stain were proof of a day well lived.
Alle found herself leaning closer to the glass. The scene outside felt distant and intimate at the same time, like a memory that was not hers but still hurt to look at. Something in the easy freedom of the children unsettled the air around her. The laughter, the open space, the security of being watched over with love it all pressed against a door inside her that she had spent years trying to keep shut.Without meaning to, she stepped back into the narrow corridors of her childhood. In her mind, the bright playground dissolved, replaced by the cramped rooms of the house where raised voices were more familiar than songs. Her father's anger lived in the walls there, sudden and explosive, turning ordinary evenings into battlegrounds. Her mother moved through that space like a ghost made of patience, swallowing words before they could form, folding herself into silence to keep the peace that never truly came.
Then there was her sister. Older by a few years, sharper by many. She decided what Alle wore, when she could step outside, what she was allowed to enjoy. Rules came not as guidance but as command, laced with criticism that lingered long after the words faded. Games were a luxury, laughter an interruption. Childhood, for Alle, was something that happened to other children on the other side of the window.Now, as the first faint star appeared in the bruised sky, Alle's reflection floated on the glass, layered over the image of the playground. For a moment, she saw herself as a small girl standing just beyond the swings, hands by her sides, watching the others run. The ache that rose in her chest was familiar, an old companion. She lifted the cup to her lips, though the tea had already gone cold, and wondered without quite daring to form the thought when her own life had begun to feel like something she was only allowed to watch from a distance.