Member-only story
My Reading Lamp
Slowly dying like embers and stars and grandpa and everything else
The lamp was exactly the way a lamp should be: beautiful when you look at it. Without demanding attention in the space. And the light came out of it like a flower that has only begun to wilt
and not yet learned of the news. Another name for this is early stage cancer. And I stored most of my pain in a trapdoor in the back of a photo frame. A man told
me I can keep my pain and memories as long as I leave them in the past. But I lied. I touch them from time to time. Poke them in funny ways to know they’re there. Something about this makes
them like people, which I poke to know they’re there. It’s strange to think I was 400 miles away only a few hours ago, or when I drive by a house that used to be my house, we are all gone. Off the couch.
The teddy bear has yellowed and worn. Hair, once vibrant, is now matted down flat like eroded dunes. His bowtie hangs loose. Red. I pricked my thumb on a rose thorn, forming
a concave pool of blood then decided I could never have sex again. It was too intimate. The thought of being inside a woman, or anyone, was terrifying. Imagine being so close you cannot escape.
