Another day dawns, just like the one before and all the others that preceded it through centuries. The word, century, burns with the rising sun though the ground is frozen and the wind is very cold. The window shutters on their rusted hinges bang and squeak. The floorboards moan and creak even though I am the only one here, and I never move from the window.

           The dank, mouldy smell of my faded flowered shawl reminds me of how many years I have been waiting by this window. I smell my dry tears and evaporated sweat. I hear my loneliness as the house breathes. Sometimes, when the wind blows, I can hear its whistle through the cracks of the walls. I hear laughter, the call of the outside, yet I never move to answer it.

           My bones, like the rest of me, are frail, weak and stiff. I am old, used and broken, my heart as cold as stone. A century is a long time. I am tired. I long for the sight of that familiar cart to stop below my window. For Ben to come up the stairs, through the door of this room. My eyes close; I can almost see his rusted brown hair, green eyes shiny with tears cried long ago. I told him not to weep for me, I told him myself. I can see him stopping only a foot into the room.

           "I's come here to tell ya, Eleanor. Is O.K, ya can go home now." He would tell me. Then the whistling would come again and this time, I would answer the call from outside and the cold and the sun wouldn't matter anymore. I would be somewhere better, where the day would never dawn again, and it would be warm and the light would be white.

           Until then, I sit by my window, in my creaky old room, my tattered shawl covering my stooped old shoulders. The sun rises higher into the clear, cloudless, gray sky. And for another century, I wait.