The Light We Made (Without Actually Making Light of Anything)
The fourth of July in America. A big broad night hunching over the purple mountains, the fruitless plain, waiting for purple rain. It’s funny how you wait the whole hot, bright day for the darkness so you can make your own light. And when the fireworks are over and the smoke blows away, when you think back on it, you don’t remember the night or the dark. You just remember the light you made.
She was born with a weak heartbeat and an umbilical cord around her wrist. She’s growing up in the middle of an earthquake that lasts for years, where history shakes so hard I can hear her teeth rattling. The world is hot, but somehow it’s winter all the time. Short, pallid days and those broad, hunching nights. So she makes her own light. She holds it up and lets it spark and burn. And when she thinks back on all this, she won’t remember the night or the dark. Just the light she made. The light I made. The light we made.
(Idaho; 4 July 2020)
