By Candlelight

By Candlelight

He lies on the bed, the tousled blankets pressing their wrinkles into his back. I watch his breath rise and fall, his eyelids slipping shut and rolling open in a slow, rhythmic pattern: subtle signs that he's alive. He won't give me any more, he refuses make it any easier to justify why I'm here.

"It's February," he says, his words sliding between his lips, upsetting the perfect arrangement of his body. Wind rattles the windowpanes, screaming of treelimbs cracked, of breath stolen from lungs. It's best nothing can touch him here.

The electric lights flicker and die. Darkness closes over me, so thick that I may drown. I feel him beside me, still unmoving, as though the world beyond his eyes has no effect upon him. He sees only because he can, breathes only because it seems right. I touch his knee with my hand and feel his bones, surprisingly solid, beneath my fingers. The air eddies and curls as he sits up beside me.

He shivers, becoming something alive and human in this intimate obscurity. With only the black of night between us, he becomes familiar. The darkness gives him a name, a past, and lets me remember who he is, and who he was. I remember why I stay.

A match flares, light blossoming in a garden of shadow, catching the wick of a candle. Sulfur and ash grind at my nose. His hand emerges from the charcoal air, clutching a cigarette. He holds it to the flame, inhales the pungent smoke with wrinkled lungs. I sniff the air, trying to find any hint of the clean, violent winds on the other side of the glass. He looks at me, eyes dark in his marble face.

"What's it like," I ask, "when you get like that?"

Smoke weaves up from the tip of the cigarette, dissolving a few inches from the source. It can't survive without an anchor. "It's like being lost in your dreams." He takes the burning paper away from his mouth to run his dry tongue over his parched lips. "I'm surrounded by locked doors. I want to wake up, I just can't."

The wind touches the window with less urgency, quiet now. Smoke flows over his lip, catching the glow of the candle: light that should have shone on his face. He's ruined the perfect stillness of the night. The yellow flame casting shadows, the cigarette powdering the air: he brought them here. All should be pure, dark, cold.

I stand. "Are you hungry?"

He lies down again. "Yeah."

I feel my way into the kitchen, and find some leftover pizza. A moment, and all the tragedies of the night consume me. I blink and turn back. He's still lying down, the cigarette glowing in his hand. Already he's fallen asleep. I take the burning butt from his fingers and rub it into an ashtray. I sit down, trying not to stare at his profile in the half dark. The wind has died down and the smoky room feels empty. I snuff the candle, giving the night back its purity while I still believe such a thing exists.