The Light on a Saturday

I am meant to be packing right now, but I am not. I am doing everything but what needs to be done, as is the case lately. Last night, I spent the evening with the women I live alongside, sharing present woe and complicated history and laughing, somehow, despite it all. You could say I had been fortified by the wisdom of the feminine (and a glass or two of a peppery Cabernet Franc) to send a text I was avoiding. It’s good to call these things before the hand of fate swoops in. It’s good to get ahead of the misery.

I am re-reading Wuthering Heights and find the story of Catherine and Heathcliff touching everything. A grasping hand through the window at three; my body roused by the shrill ping! of a message which I do not read until the morning (if you can call the hour such a thing). Morning, still dark and damp. Morning, missing a vowel and my good sense. The bedside lamp casting a dim warmth and everything still soft with the texture of the dream I faintly kept.

The sun rises before I am out the door, and Mirek is already there smoking his first cigarette of the day. We nod at each other, and I take comfort in knowing he will be sat in the same chair when I return from work, quotidian like the park statue one passes by on their afternoon walks. Some nights, when I am lonely and my mind wanders, I will ask to join him at his post, and we stand together wordlessly—flicking ash and consumed by thought. Quiet company.

On this particular Saturday, the light took on a strange quality, more pronounced and hopeful seeming, which felt like an insult. Can light be characterized as hopeful? Glittering, too mythical. Shining, too dull, and scintillating, too pretentious. The challenge with words is finding the right ones to use, and so often do I get it wrong! Neglecting to express what I really mean, though it feels painfully clear before I get started. I watch the trees in eager conversation with each other, stirred awake by a western breath. I envy the birds’ effortless songs.

I wish my spirit were this faithful thing that wasn’t so easily disquieted. I wish my voice were less the trembling kind. What might it be like to know what to say and when to say it? It takes effort to get the articulation and the timing right, and I am noticing I tend to arrive at the period too late. Somehow being left behind even when I am the one doing the leaving.

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