LIGHT SHOW
2/2
image from Patrick Joust
The daylight broke and found shelter in the crevice of the old couch, outstretched and burdened by this awful tint of brown; though maybe only seen if you squinted. It was not something that was so easily exhibited, maybe because it did not want to be. The light transformed in shadows rotund, triangular, sometimes so maddeningly abstract it seemed it was playing tricks. It shone a spotlight on the cat who, in gratefulness, bowed and stretched as if to pray to the light that so often neglected him, and it clawed at this shadow as if it were skin. In the sunlight, staggered dust would float and then disappear so quickly as if it had not just been stagnant, still in air. But then, in their orange, speckled flight, they would chase you as if only to make you shoo them away, which (of course) would only make them multiply. We’d laugh about those specks of light, and then I think the cat would chase them.
It was in those years following school that I thought of her–it would come suddenly, such a surprise to me I’d find my head violently shaking at the thought, though if it was habitual or instinctual I’m still unsure. It was while drinking by the pool, the way wine would passively slither up my straw, that reminded me of the way he would sulk while she walked, or maybe as light jumped from children’s floaties that reminded me of how antsy she’d been, so scared to stay in one place, so frightened to be completely still. But so often she was. I didn’t know where she was working now, I don’t think I completely wanted to know, and whenever someone brought her up I’d shake my head as if to refuse and say, No, I won’t hear it. But it was to the secret pity and acknowledgement of everybody that I did, and they’d slip me this knowing glance as they’d come out with a stray piece of information anyway, almost as if slipping a prisoner a treat. It was as merciful as it was awful, and it was with these stray bits of information that I was able to conjure a faint image of her, even if was poor and bleak and unsubstantiated. And it was when December had come, when the thick, secular (and not many things are truly secular) silence of winter would coat the roofs in a way even thicker than white sleeves, when flakes, in their crystal mockery, had blanketed and frenched everyone but me, that I thought of her and then stopped in my tracks and thought about what we’d have liked to drink at that time. If she were there.
I would sometimes see her at the corner shop on Jamestown Road, near the church, back when I really went and townies would slip in and out as if it was their own living room. I was usually in the CD section: they never had anything good, old country records nobody wanted, greatest hits compilations (that for some reason, had included Madonna’s worst); there was some Bonnie Hill, an older Dylan record which only diehards had probably heard—CD’s so unwanted and pathetically obscure (not in the beautiful way) that even if they were rare and valuable nobody would have cared if the last copy of them was destroyed. I’d wave. Or did I?
The daylight broke and secreted faith all over the temple, and those already bowing sulked in the absence of light, replaced by devotion they had not yet known how to hold. *finish