every window

my mom tells me
that when she was first broken up with
she cleaned every window 
in her house for days.
i don't know if she's telling me
to do the same. i have been thinking a lot
about my relationship to light.
once i lived in a room with not windows.
when i felt particularly unfettered
i would take a pencil & draw on where
i would like to place them. 
one in the ceiling & one right next
to my bed.
growing up we were not dusting people
but every once in a while we would
get on our knees & try to be.
paper towels & velvet lungs.
i think about the yellow light
in my mom's windows of the apartment
i never saw. i wish i could sit with her there
to have coffee. stare out the clean windows
& watch a pair of robins harvest twigs
for a new skeleton.
in my apartment in the mountains
i swept every day. that was my form
of window-cleaning. there were
only three windows 
in that apartment.
all but one i kept the blinds shut.
the one was tucked in a weird notch
in the bedroom. i went there
to worship. it was too high
for cleaning but still held the sun.
watercolor painting. every gold
& every yellow. my mom has not visited
my houses often but i still come home
to ours. the windows
are full of spider webs, grit,
& grease. i do not know if she wants
them cleaned. we cannot talk about light
without witness. what would
we see if we cleaned our windows.
shadows with crisper edges. 
our skin, like bedsheets 
on a clothesline. i want to ask her
when she stopped her ritual
with the windows. 
does she miss it? should i try it myself
even though my grief has grown legs?