# Light Going Out The lamp dims, and I think of all the rooms I've lived in— how each one held a corner I never quite reached, a shadow that refused to lift even when I lit every wick. My mother used to say darkness is just light's absence, as if absence were nothing, as if a room could forget the shape of brightness and still know itself. But I've watched the oil run thin, seen the flame shrink to a whisper, and I know better now— darkness doesn't wait outside. It lives inside the light, patient as a guest who knows the house better than the host. The bulb flickers. Once. Twice. And in that stutter, I see all the years collapsing— conversations half-finished, letters never sent, the way your face looked before you turned away. When the light goes out, what remains is not darkness, but the memory of brightness— sharper, somehow, more real than the light itself ever was. I do not reach for the switch. Let it die. Let it all go soft, go still, go under. In the dark, at least, I will not have to pretend I know where I am going.

Your body's scent arrives... are you hovering somewhere near?

I know you no longer wish to dwell in this room of regrets, yet I clutch at you every moment.

The sky has darkened with vast clouds, rain preparing its siege. A thunderous dark descends all around, strange and terrible.

Nothing will come easily—today will bring a fierce storm. Perhaps you will touch me. I'm not trying to understand the mind's workings. Nothing remains in this room but a naked woman's form; suddenly pitch-blackness falls upon the bedroom—the candle's flame went out moments ago!

Your dim face blurs in the tempestuous wind. You approach bearing some terrible hunger; if silence breaks, calamity will follow. We are about to witness something terribly beautiful; gradually time's torment grows indifferent, and the pulse of melody flows through the blood of disbelief!

Can I be yours?—in the cold air, the wounds on my body begin to loosen. Through my flesh there courses...a scattered, sweetly burning pain; in that moment when our souls merge—nothing of you remains unseen.