As a child, on dark October mornings, rain would knock at my window. I limp down the stairs, yearning for someone to have been before me. (I had quite liked these mornings for this reason)
My mother with her feet up on the table in a voiceless conversation with the gray blue light that blanketed the garden window...
My father at the head of the table, drinking from his tooth colored cup, stained with coffee. His glasses, fogging...
This was the pocket under the quilt. The belly of heat that preserved your spirit, and made the cold, damp air more delicious. The invisible, warm, yellow light that put that gray blue outside beside ourselves.
But if not, I would sit in my seat, and gnaw at the kitchen table. Veneer and shellac crunching under my teeth, listening internally to my bones squeak and chafe, like starch, as they slowly began to wake.
On dark October mornings, when rain would knock at our garden window, and the gray blue outside would flood into our kitchen, my father would turn on the lights. I would ask him, knowing the reason why, why we would turn on the lights if it was morning. And he responded: "Because it is dark, even though it is morning." And this validation and allowance filled me with the greatest happiness and comfort, my nose flooding with the delicious perfume of a thick rain, and the warmth of an inner light.
