Beacon
Colleen Kearney Rich

AS THE DAYS grow shorter, my life becomes a series of clicks. My husband clicks on the lights in every room. Later I click them off. On, on, on, on. Off. 

Take a flashlight, he tells me every night. 

I do, but the dog and I prefer to slip into the darkness for our nightly walks. We choose to wander this country road, with only the moon lighting our way. 

Our irises expand. We can see other colors. Crickets sing to each other in the darkness then quiet when we draw near. A fox skulks across the road in the distance, only his outline visible.

When we come around the curve, I can spot our house through the trees. Our house glows like a beacon in the night. As we get closer, I have to look away, brightness pouring from each window. 

Sometimes this light is good. When I’m driving home late at night, it is reassuring. My brain says, yes, there it is, and relaxes. Safety. That’s what he wants: safety, no surprises.

But tonight the light seems obscene, loud.

I wonder if the neighbors can see our glow from their back decks, if you can see it from space. Are we throwing an aura into the night sky, like the glimmer of a distant fire?

Inside I reach for a light switch.

The electrical bill, I say. 

I hate the dark, he says.

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Colleen Kearney Rich is the author of the chapbooks Things You Won't Tell Your Therapist (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and Bunnyman Bridge (A3 Press, 2021). Her writing has been published in the literary journals SmokeLong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Matchbook, and Pithead Chapel, among others. One of the founding editors of So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art, she has an MFA from George Mason University in Virginia, where she also works.

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