Personal Sun

Here comes the sun—

not the burning ball we agreed upon,

but a smaller sun. A *personal* sun.

It arrives in a brown paper package,

postage due, signed by someone named Stevens

who may or may not have a corporeal form.

>

The sun is approximately the size of a grapefruit.

It hums a frequency that tastes like copper and Tuesdays.

My neighbor, Margaret, has three of them.

She keeps them in the crisper drawer next to the hummus.

She says they're fresher that way.

I believed her. Margaret has never lied to me,

except that one time about the ducks.

She doesn’t talk about the ducks anymore.

She doesn’t talk much at all.

>

Here comes the sun—

rolling down the hallway in a child's toy truck,

red paint chipped, wheels squeaking a melody

in B-flat minor (very committed, those wheels).

It stops at apartment 4C.

The woman there collects suns now.

She has seventeen.

They have started whispering to each other at 3 AM.

Last Thursday, they drafted a petition.

It was very formal.

It smelled of parchment and something older.

Something like ash.

>

I asked the sun what it wanted.

It asked me what I wanted.

I said, "Directions to the grocery store."

The sun said, "Everyone always wants to go somewhere else."

The sun was not wrong.

The sun is never wrong—

it just answers questions no one remembers asking.

>

Here comes the sun,

and it says it's been here all along,

that we've all been orbiting it backward,

that the darkness wasn't the absence of light

but the light learning to listen.

It says the moon is actually just a very shy sun,

and the stars are suns that gave up.

It says these things while microwaving.

>

My coffee now tastes like metal and apology.

The sun is responsible.

The sun apologizes constantly but doesn't stop.

"Sorry," it says, from inside the kettle.

"Sorry," it whispers through the ventilation system.

"Sorry," it scrawls in condensation on every mirror.

The mirrors have stopped reflecting me correctly.

I look… warmer. Brighter. Thinner around the edges.

>

Here comes the sun—

not from the east anymore,

but from inside ourselves, Margaret's neighbor says,

while arranging her suns like houseplants,

measuring their growth in inches of strangeness.

The smallest one has started telling jokes.

They're not very good jokes.

We laugh anyway.

We have to.

It burns when we don’t.

>

Margaret gave me one yesterday.

She said I was ready.

I didn’t ask for what.

>

It sits on my kitchen counter now,

pulsing softly, like it’s thinking.

Sometimes it rolls a little closer when I’m not looking.

Sometimes I wake up and it’s already watching me.

>

I asked it what it wanted.

...

It said, "You first."

...

Here comes the sun—

closer now,

close enough to touch.

>

I think that’s the point.

...

The woman in 4C says they don’t replace you all at once.

She says it’s gradual.

You dim.

They don’t.

>

Margaret hasn’t opened her fridge in days.

Something inside keeps knocking.

>

It’s all right, the sun sings, in a voice like wind chimes

made of something that used to matter.

It’s all right.

It’s all right.

It’s all—

...

I don’t remember the rest.

...

But I remember this:

I picked it up.

And for a moment,

just a moment,

I could see everything clearly—

every room lit from the inside,

every person holding something small and bright,

every window glowing like a warning.

>

There was no sky.

There was never a sky.

Just reflections.

Just us.

Just—

Here it comes.

____________________________________________________

Written for L.C. Schafer's spring challenge;