Woman at a Window, After Hopper

He is famous for the light, but look at her.The way she has arranged herself to bealone on purpose, in the yellow oblongthe morning lays across the empty floor.

We are taught to read her as a loneliness.The tour groups murmur it — so sad, so still.But I have sat exactly where she sits,in exactly that reclaimed and guarded light,

and I can tell you what the painter knewand would not say, because a title can't:that this is not the picture of a lack.This is a woman no one is about

to need. This is the one hour of her daythat belongs to no one's mouth or hands or clock.He caught her in the instant before the worldremembers where she lives. Look how she keeps it.