sixth; between each switch, between each row of houses, is a steep, forestcovered incline.
I’d spent countless nights on my roof, staring through the trees at
his house, though I didn’t know it was his back then. All that’s visible in
those nights are the single sodium light above his porch. It was the sort of
light you only notice at night – the kind you see on the sides of industrial
park warehouses or small, seemingly doorless utility buildings on dirt
roads, out the window of a car, speeding through some already-forgotten
summer night. It’s the sort of light that makes you wonder why you’re
there in the first place; in that car, in that place, in that summer night.
The sort of light you remember when the rest of a memory’s gone; when
the people and places in a memory have become meaningless, when the
people have filed out and the places have become gray, it’s the only color
remaining. They’re the lights at the edges of the world. Not wards, but
indicators; relative points without which we couldn’t measure the absolute
emptiness they abut.
The light cast an orange glow in a half-circle downward toward
the porch. Where the light clung to the wall, all that was visible was the
shadows cast by the repeating shingle pattern in the vinyl siding – there
was nothing else, nothing adorning the walls, nothing hung, not even a
single window. The light was centered between the porch’s edge on the
left and the sliding
glass door on the right, and was set at least three feet higher on the wall
than the top of the doorframe.
The light spread outward, illuminating a porch without furniture
or decoration. It was only until I’d seen the lack of furniture that I noted
the lack of people, ever and always; no parties on holidays, nor quiet
gatherings – not even a single person. Yet I knew someone lived there,
as the light came on most nights, regular enough to be expected but not
uniform enough to be on any sort of timer. The more I thought about
the empty porch, the sadder it made me; with every passing night I spent
sitting on the roof, I hoped more and more to see someone on the porch.
From time to time I imagined myself on the porch. Without
furniture, I’d sit on the deck with my back against the wall. I’d wondered
for a time which direction porch’s boards ran, and I decided it made the
most sense in my mind if they ran diagonal. As I’d sit, the only noise to
be heard would be the hum of the sodium light, somewhat loud but not
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