Outside The Window

Eliana kept reminiscing about the times, she and Milo stayed up all night talking, sitting on the old wooden bed that was now pushed against the dresser she often used to hide in when they played hide and seek. That they included whoever was staying in the house at the time, Milo’s parents, grandparents, and sometimes kids that came over from the town. Whenever she visited, no matter how long, she had always felt welcome and loved staying there. Especially when Theresa, Milo’s grandmother, told her she made sure to have the room ready when she came, starting to call it Eliana’s room after her third stay. As she was doing so, Milo was looking at her, trying to figure out what she was thinking about that made her smile like that. He wanted to see her smile like that more often, all the time if that was possible. Seeing Eliana lost in her thoughts he decided to leave her to take a trip down memory lane for a while and start preparing dinner down in the kitchen.

She only noticed Milo moving away from the door from the corner of her eye, not paying attention to what was happening around her as she took another step into the room and towards the window. A window that she had looked out of so many times she could picture the garden outside perfectly, at least the garden as it used to be. What she saw now loosely resembled the images in her mind, the garden also having suffered the same fate as the less used parts of the house. The grass was overgrown, and wildflowers had found their way between the blades of grass, giving it a whimsical vibe as many bees and butterflies were fluttering around. As pristine as the greenhouse once used to be with windows that never seemed to get dirty, as broken it looked now. Some of the windows were broken and there were holes in the glass roof, nature also having taken over as ivy and flowers grew along the walls and out of any crevice they could find. The once neatly kept planter boxes now not only housed the fruit trees Theresa had planted long ago but were the home to many weeds now as well. Seeing the greenhouse in such a state made Eliana long for how it had once been, and she made a promise to herself that when she would find the time, she would restore the greenhouse to its former glory.

As her gaze wandered on, she saw the state of the rest of the garden. The chicken coop long forgotten and just as overgrown as everything else, the fairy lights that used to be draped between large trees now lying scattered underneath them and the tree house Milo’s grandpa had built for them was no longer recognisable. There were only a few planks left of the floor and the roof was in no better condition, the only thing that seemed to resemble the old tree house were the walls with holes for windows. And even those were not left untouched by the ivy growing through every other crack and crevice. Some flowers had also found their way up the tree and grew wherever they found space. Yet another thing Eliana swore to herself she would attempt to fix when she found the time.

While she was looking out over the back garden Milo had finished making dinner and called her to eat. Tearing her gaze away from the old tree house Eliana made her way downstairs to join him for what she could smell would be a delicious dinner.