“Gray foam rope,” she said. “You push it into the deep cracks first. It gives the caulk something to lean against. Think of it as the rebar for your weatherproofing.”
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. how to seal cracks around windows
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. “Gray foam rope,” she said
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. Think of it as the rebar for your weatherproofing
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.