The sill was the bottom of the window. A piece of stone or wood that stuck out past the face of the building and angled down so the rain ran off instead of running in. The sill was the window's lower lip. The sill caught what the window let through. Rain. Pigeons. Elbows. Flower pots. The sill was the most used shelf in the apartment and nobody called it a shelf.

The sill was where you leaned. You opened the window and folded your arms on the sill and watched the street. The sill was the balcony of the tenement. The fire escape was illegal to sit on but the sill was legal and the sill was free and the sill put you exactly between inside and outside. The sill was the threshold of the air. The sealed window has no sill because the sealed window has no lean. You cannot lean on a sealed window. You can only look through it like a television.

The stone sill lasted. Brownstone or limestone or granite cut to fit the opening and set with a drip edge on the underside so the water fell off instead of running down the face of the building. The drip edge was a groove cut into the bottom of the stone and the groove broke the surface tension and the water dropped. One groove. One idea. Solved the problem for two hundred years. The vinyl window has no drip edge. The vinyl window has caulk. Caulk is a solution that expires. The drip edge is a solution that does not.

The sill held the pie. The pie sat on the sill to cool because the sill was the coldest surface in the kitchen in winter and the most ventilated in summer. The sill was the refrigerator before the refrigerator. The sill held bottles of milk in January and tomato plants in July. The sill was four seasons of use on twelve inches of stone. The modern window has no sill to speak of. The modern window has a lip. A lip is not a sill. A lip is a sill that gave up.

The sill told you about the building. A limestone sill on a brownstone meant money. A wood sill meant the landlord would paint it every five years or not at all. A cracked sill meant water was getting in and if the water was getting in the building was losing. The sill was the building's tell. The poker player has a tell and the building has a sill. You could read every building on the block by its sills. You cannot read a vinyl window. A vinyl window has no tell. A vinyl window says the same thing every day which is nothing.

See also: Sash Weight, Window Box