The Lamp Post

There was a lamp post, just one, in the middle of a field at night— no road leading to it, no fence surrounding it, just light standing there like a question no one asked, glowing for no one. The ache in my chest opened wide when I saw it— a hollow, bottomless thing, like longing without direction, and I fell in. I thought: If that’s the light, then I must be lost in the outer darkness, and didn’t even try to move toward it. Sleep claimed me for nearly a week, dragged under by a gravity no one else could feel. Until one day a song on a distant radio broke through— The Eggplant That Ate Chicago. It was so ludicrous I snort-laughed—once— and the dark cracked slightly, just enough for air. Then I unwound my grave shroud and breathed.