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Chiaroscuro

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The image of a distant light has followed me since childhood.
One, a ceiling lamp blurred by smoke as I nearly died in my crib.
The other, seen years later in a field and written about in
The Lamp Post. I didn’t know they were the same light— until I wrote this.

It was a ghostly orb obscured by smog— glowing faintly yellow at the center and fading to amber, then ochre, raw sienna, and finally umber— as if the light itself were turning into smoke— and I couldn’t breathe. Even my crib was hazy beneath the poisonous congregation of vapors roiling and swirling near the ceiling and descending lower, like tornado clouds, brown and black— and I wondered where was my dad. Maybe he heard me coughing, or finally noticed the smoke— a yellow rectangle appeared with him silhouetted within, but I was already drifting and woke up somewhere else. Years later, in a field at night, I saw a lamp post glowing in the distance— soft-edged, haloed, as if blurred by breath or memory. I didn’t think of the nursery, not then— but something in me paused, and recognized the shape of despair.

Copyright © | Year Posted 2025




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