EMILY PRATT SLATIN

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She/Her/Hers Lesbian

Former Career Fire and EMS Lieutenant-Specialist, Writer, and Master Photographer.

Notes From The Window—November Rain

November 9, 2025—Middletown Springs, Vermont (Home)
The wind and the rain have been restless all day—the kind that move together, low and steady, never asking where they're welcome. They rattled the porch light early this morning, then spent the afternoon combing through the tall grass beyond the back porch. By dusk, both had worked themselves into something gentler—a hush that carried more memory than sound. The kind of quiet that doesn't quite trust itself yet.

There are days here when everything feels too still, and then there are days like this, when even the air can't decide which direction to settle. I stood by the window long enough for my coffee to go cold, watching the pines bend and straighten like they were rehearsing forgiveness. The sky was a dim, uncertain blue—the color of something you've already said goodbye to but can't quite stop missing. I thought about how many versions of me the weather has already met: the woman who fought everything, the one who ran toward it, and the one who finally let the storm pass without needing to name it.

Inside, the house creaked the way it does when it's trying to remember its shape. The rain ticked unevenly on the windowsill, a rhythm that doesn't bother me anymore. I've learned to measure time in smaller ways—the hum of the refrigerator at night, the click of the heat coming on, the slow, uneven breath of the house as it settles. My calendar used to be full of alarms and arrival times. Now I keep track of seasons by the sound of rain on the roof. You stop rushing once you realize no one's keeping score.

The window glass quivered under another gust, and I caught my reflection faintly in it—half light, half ghost. For a moment, I saw all the women I've been layered on top of each other like weathered paint. The one who ran toward fire. The one who mistook motion for meaning. The one who finally learned how to stay. The world was never asking me to save it. It was asking me to remain.

I think about the ghosts sometimes—the ones that live in my hands more than in my head. The way they tighten when thunder rolls in, or how I still look toward the sound of sirens even when they're miles away. Some habits never leave; they just quiet down. And some nights, when I can't sleep, I trace the scars and remember that I didn't get them by accident. Every one of them is proof of a story I walked out of.

The wind's quieted down now, and the rain's softened to a whisper against the windows. The light's almost gone. There's a mug on the table half full, gone cold again. The sky's turned that shade between steel and mercy. Somewhere out in the pasture, something moves through the grass without hurry. I don't need to know what it is. Some truths stay truer when you stop chasing them.

And maybe that's what this life has been trying to teach me all along—that peace isn't the absence of storms. It's learning to stand in the middle of one without needing to be the lightning. It's the quiet conviction that you've already survived worse weather than this. And that when the wind finally moves on, it'll leave just enough behind to remind you where you've been—and who you've become in the staying.