Lighter,

the word that comes to mind after many nights. As when a plane descends over a city you call home, the body's rise against the belt strung across your lap. Darkness and lampposts, like gold and silver beads below, falling into them. Or better yet, wading in the bioluminescent bay and each kick creates a soft glow, each stroke makes you think light could come from the body, and not a world disturbed into brilliance. Because it captures what I mean—both the weight and how you see what you could not. As when I heard him cry and lumbered down the hall to find you there first, pacing the room, singing softly in his ear. Through the window, the city sparkled and seemed to have grown though, by day, I never see more than two or three men working at once, lifting together, say, a plank of wood. Years ago, my mother sat beside my bed, eager to bear the fever with me. We pass him back and forth between us until it breaks, and I no longer want what I wanted before. As when one day you look upon the house you've built and can't recall the field.