linens remain in their formation . Yet the light has left an unmistakable impression on my eyes . It ’ s been burned in , seared under my eyelids . It was a person , their face illuminated in that wonderful orange . A crevice lined their nose , dimpled their mouth , made their eyes glassy and brown . They bundled their hair into a ponytail . I could see the band of elastic . The light outlines their form as if it were wet sand .
I stare at that square for what must be an age . I will that human being to come back , to clatter into the light again and upturn the dresser . I want them to streak in and make the shadows dance across the wall . Maybe they will bring more things in , more items that can be touched by the light . Maybe the person can make shadow puppets on the wall . I can see their fingers contorting to make a hopping rabbit , a quacking duck , a mess of knuckles that happily wriggles and writhes . All they would have to do is dart back into the light , take the whole space for their own , and breathe a few times .
I ’ m starting to make out faces amid the darkness . The orange etches onto it , lining frowns and down-cast eyebrows . Forms emerge in anticipation , clamouring . Hands reach from that formless black in grasping , orange-tinted lines . They ’ re trying to pry open the frame of the balcony window . They want to bend the metal inlay so that colour can spill out into the world . They need to lap up the light – let it germinate in the barren soil . Then the person can come charging out into the open air and slap the life back into everything . They ’ ll have all of this abyssal space to fling their arms out . They can twirl without smashing their fingers against the walls . They can let a rippling skirt and a slashed blouse cast myriad shapes across the expanse that lies just beyond their little room . The light would be everywhere . It would have no borders , no lines , no end to its reach .
The light has shifted into a burnt umber , but it can ’ t have changed all that much . The hangers are still . The linen – towels , they have to be towels with a whorl along one side – scarcely move . And the dresser is just there . It ’ s squatting like a rank devil . I can imagine its feet curled into hoary toes , claws growing so that it spikes the pad of its foot .
Around the window all , the black is still tumbling into nothingness . An anxious thought flashes in my mind : the light will be winked out . Why would such an impenetrable void allow such a startling reminder of its fragility to exist ? It would smash it , wither it , clamour in and smash it against the sides of the glass . Then the light would have never existed . It will have always been black . The light was an illusion . It was a fantasy for an addled , ink-stained mind . A flash of imagination that was transformed into a hallucination .
The human from before is looking at me . In the time that I had retreated into my addled thoughts and fantasies , they have spotted me . Their hand reaches up – a spindly thing with
Peering out of the 6th Floor 66