He scraped away the old, crumbling putty that resembled dried-out bread crust. He vacuumed the dust, the dead ladybugs, the tiny bones of some unidentifiable insect. The window looked raw, almost embarrassed by its own decay.
The next day, he painted over the dried caulk. It absorbed the color perfectly, disappearing into the wood. The crack was no longer a crack. It was a surface. how to seal cracks around windows
The draft was gone. In its place was a profound, earned silence. And that, Ernest decided, was its own kind of light. He scraped away the old, crumbling putty that
Ernest blinked. “Backer rod?”
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. The next day, he painted over the dried caulk
That night, armed with a putty knife, a caulk gun, and a damp rag, he began.