A Love Letter to the Light

In the window above my bed, I see a light.

It comes from an apartment in the adjacent building, not more than two or three stories above me. It comes from a desk lamp, or a reading lamp, in what appears to be a study. The light is bright.

It's an LED light. I watch it flicker on and off throughout the night. Sometimes it hits my blinds just right and wakes me with its subtle glow.

I think about that light a lot. I wonder what model it is. Was it built from scrambled Ikea pieces? Was it gifted from a rushed bridal registry? What kind of lamp is it?

Is it clap-on? Is it a spinning switch?

Is it touch-sensitive?

whose hands fiddle with that switch at 9:16pm, 11:38pm, 4:24 am? What thoughts storm in that apartment like a flash flood of anxiety to warrant an impulse to reach for the light? What nightmares wake those hands as they fly to the switch, clutching the doorway between wake and sleep, reality and dream?

And moments later, what finally lays those thoughts to rest beneath a blanket of peaceful security, enough to welcome back the blackness in all its unrelenting beauty?

I am touch-sensitive.

I think about that lamp a lot. Its light has become an old friend, or more realistically, a quirky roommate who talks in its sleep. When it wakes, I wake, and in the wake of disturbed sleep I count the minutes between its metallic glow and its power relinquished to darkness.

What brilliant ideas flood the mind of its controller? What flows from his pen and his mouth, frothing at the edges with symphonies and poetry and prose? What equations find ends only in the containment of night?

He is touch-sensitive.

So we lie awake in the silence of sirens and city strets, together locked in this stagnant moment, minds racing. And I have to wonder if he sees the glow of his lamp in my curious eyes,

down

down

down

below in my apartment across the block. From my bed, I do not wish him sweet dreams.

I desperately wish for the light to return.

I yearn for its company, and for the comfort it brings.

Just us in the midnight hour, kept awake by the lamp's permission to think, to feel, to emote, to escape the nightmares and to return, finally, to that cautious and sensitive touchpoint.