Little toy soldier on the window pane. He watches the cars go by. In the mornings, he watches the men buy milk in their night clothes and skim through newspapers through their gummy eyes. His room is quiet. The bed is made with pale blue sheets. The pillows are new.
The couple in the house poke their heads through the door and look around. They don’t necessarily notice him. Sometimes, the woman comes in and looks through the window. She picks him up and looks him in the eye but she says nothing. She leaves him there again by the window.
There is a basket right under where he sits. Basket full of toys; dolls with woollen hair and big bright cars that make sounds. Boxes and boxes of board games; Scrabble in a hope that the kid will be fascinated by words and Monopoly in case he is all about the money. Paint boxes and colouring books. Playing cards with pictures of fruits on the back.
An invisible child plays with cards on the marble floor, painting some invisible pictures by the side.
The height chart on the wall has pictures of animals on it. Giraffes and rabbits, a strange way to assure both short and tall kids. It remains unmarked.
The man of the house comes in once in a while and sits on the freshly made bed. Sometimes, he smokes a cigarette but almost always puts it out midway. Then he sighs and leaves, the smoke and the fizzling guilt settle in the corner of the room.
The tin soldier observes all this in silence. The little gun on his back doesn’t work and perhaps never did. Then again, nobody ever tried.
In the room next to this one, the man and the woman fall asleep every night at around the same time. The child they never could have curls and sleeps between them.