The Lamp

I am fifty-eight years old and I had decided that part of life was a room I had shut up for the season and would not be opening again. I am writing down, in my own hand, that I was wrong, because nobody tells you that you are allowed to be wrong about that, and somebody should.

It was not the wanting that surprised me. I remembered wanting. It was being wanted exactly as I am now, in the body I actually live in and not the one I had at thirty. I went to turn the lamp off and he reached past me and turned it back on, as mild as a man correcting the weather, and said he would like to see me. I let him. It cost me something and gave me back a great deal more.

He is in no hurry about anything, that man, and that turns out to be its own undoing. He paid attention to me the way you pay attention to a thing you mean to keep. I will not be dignified about this. I have not been touched like that in a long time, like the touching was the whole point and not a toll on the way to somewhere else, and when I finally stopped holding my breath he said my name like it was good news he had been saving all evening.

I painted a heron this morning before the kettle was on and my hand was steadier than it has been in years. Make of that what you like. I have.