How the Light Looked

(Note: I read all my pieces out loud for you; I think they’re best that way—but feel free to read instead! And while I do love an em dash, rest assured every post is written by me—a human—not AI.)

Mostly, I remember how the light looked.

Ask me about any memory, and I can tell you which way was north.

I think I can do this because I always know where the light is coming from—

how it glances across faces,
bouncing on a full cheek—
a rounded shoulder—
while shadows settle into the hollows.

I know if I’m uncurling my body from sleep
and the light springs from the east,
it’s morning.

Once my bones become heavy
and the light creeps toward the west,
it’s evening.

The hardest times to get my bearings are night and high noon—
when the light is either absent
or so high
that the only shadows left
are tucked neatly beneath my feet.

I need the shadows like Modigliani needed his women—
the longer the better,
empty-eyed,
stretched and rounded.

Shadows don’t run out of shade.
The longer they stretch,
the more they give—
infinite ink.

I don’t remember faces.
A touch of blindness.

I don’t remember names either.

You hold out your hand to me, palm ablaze,
and the slanted light slices around you.
It climbs up your nostrils as far as it can,
the shadows making hair lines across your teeth
and nestling into each eyelet
in the lace of your blouse.

Your name—like a diamond dropped into broken glass—
was lost amongst the shimmer.

How could I hope to remember it
when you bent the light,
and all I could hear
was static, golden at the edges?

And after you leave,
I still see the two triangles you made with your hands on the doorframe—
afterimages burned into memory.

This piece bloomed to the surface after a conversation with my husband about how we remember things. Are memories feelings? Are they flashes in the body? Do we recall faces or how the air felt or how something sounded?

I scanned my memories and realized: so many of them are organized by light—literally how the light looked—and the way it contributed to a feeling or a mood. I once quit a job after the first day because I had no access to natural light. Being cut off from the thing that helps me know where I am in time was disorienting enough to leave.

Ever since that conversation, I’ve noticed how instinctively my body turns toward the light. How it orients me and grounds me.