White Light

-Photo by me

There are afternoons, now, like these ones, where the sky is heavy with its own vast weight, and the air is someone’s breath caught between your shoulder blades nuzzling at the base of your spine, a breath that has just finished a glass of ice water. These days with that tremor of breath and heavy sky, I miss my grandmother’s grilled cheese and goulash.

Now I have a room or two to myself, a wall mainly to my left full of windows letting the outside in. Blinds shut out the world. I hate them, want to rip them down with that sky just hanging there, tear it all down like an old poster or wallpaper come undone, in sheets, strips, letting the white light in.

Pillows gathered in haphazard little molehills around my on the floor; a book open, turned over to save a space, laying like a naked woman on lovers sheets pen quivering over blank, lined paper. This has become my day of rest. I keep the lights off, the natural flush of the sky restoring my sight, fighting off electricity and all other things that come with a flick of a switch or wall socket. That flush will hush into a blue-violet twilight. But I will hardly notice until the corners of my eyes ache from straining to see the white paper beneath black ink.