skylight

On the second floor of my old house, in Philadelphia, there was my bedroom. It was blue, and kind of small, my wallpaper had sports equipment, like baseballs, soccer balls, hockey sticks, a tennis racket, a bat. There was also a really, pretty, skylight.

It had a stain of dirt on it, that would look like a spider when it was dark, and just dirt when it was light. Because of how it was, the sun never actually went through the skylight. There was a bronze colored metal chain that hung and looped back up into it for adjusting a hatch up there, but it was broken and forever open. I guess someone might say that the skylight itself was broken, maybe sort of useless, an old relic in an old house, that was rusted and ugly.

But the sunlight came through it every morning, reliably. When I was young I was scared of the night, and I thought for many nights that aliens from another world would come to abduct me, and when I looked into it, and saw the grey light of the moon on the inner stained steal anteroom of the skylight, I would calm myself into a subtle, anxious sleep. -then I would wake up, and the sun’s out, and it would be a normal, Saturday morning, and I would think about my toys and what I would play with them, what cartoons were on, and use my imagination while looking into the clear blueness of the skylight, the broken-open metal shaft bringing in slight wind which would barely swing the chain, and every now and then I would see a bird shadow, and another in chase, going over top.

Mom would make eggs every Sunday. And there were other things to do in the house (lots of stuff, and outside too), but I was seven, eventually I was twelve, and I really loved my skylight. On the edge of the bed I lay, feeling heavy but sure and ready, entertained by a small cirrus cast overhead. No lights but this brightness — it is what really made me love the colors blue, orange, yellow sometimes, and the happy white. When I became a little older I would reach up as I lay and touch the chain with my middle finger, hit it so it circled around my head and made small noise.

The skylight was always too dirty to actually see anything definite. It was a blurry light, always. Then in the winter we would get snow. I could tell right away, because the sun would brighten the entire place with a glowing sometimes-yellow, and when you looked up and stared, picking your nose, biting your feet, balancing on the edge of the bed, the snow melted into flakes and pools of brighter light, and you’d know what kind of day it would be. Even though your eyes were calm and your covers settled into your shoulder-pits, you were wide awake. It was a really good light. It was the closest thing to a person that a window gets.