He finished the last window at sunset. He stood back, waiting for the draft. Nothing. Just the solid, quiet containment of warm air. He poured a glass of scotch and sat in his chair. The room was still. The heating system clicked off and did not click back on for a very long time.
This was the poetry. He loaded the gun, cut the nozzle at a 45-degree angle—Dev had been explicit about the angle—and squeezed. The bead of white latex emerged like a steady, unbroken sentence. He ran his wet finger over the bead, smoothing it, pressing it into the crevice. The excess wiped away on the rag. Finger-smooth. Rag-clean. Repeat. how to seal cracks around windows
He was not a handy man. Ernest was a retired editor of Latin American poetry. His tools were metaphor and meter, not caulk guns and putty knives. But the draft had become a personal insult. He finished the last window at sunset
Ernest smiled. He had not written a poem in years. But as he looked at the three sealed windows, he realized he had just composed one. Its stanzas were the even beads of caulk. Its meter was the steady glide of his finger. Its meaning was this: A small, honest repair is a form of love. It says, You are worth keeping warm. You are worth the attention of my hands. Just the solid, quiet containment of warm air
That night, armed with a putty knife, a caulk gun, and a damp rag, he began.
Ernest liked to say he’d bought his house for the light. It was a half-truth. He’d bought it for the morning, when the sun angled through the living room’s three tall windows and turned the dust motes into a slow-motion galaxy. But lately, that galaxy had a draft.
So he went to the hardware store.