Cir cuit, Maria Gelabert

Cir cuit

My father, penitent on the kitchen floor, searches for his dropped faith under the ruthless luminescence invading his mind.

This isn’t true. He sweeps his hands across the tiles searching for crumbs that he thinks have spilled onto the floor. All I can think is that with his head bowed and the warm light that always seems to illuminate memories caressing his skull, this is the first time he has ever looked small to me.

His self has become transparent in the past’s light, or perhaps I have simply learnt to read the space between us.

Light as truth, light as the revealer of truth-my teeth are blinding in darkness, ivory in shadow, and stained in the light; there is color before the light illuminates them and there is color after; all light does is change the tone.

I turn, uncomfortable with the feeble creature that has overtaken my father, and face the window, my reflection that can appear distressingly distant some evenings,

26 Pillars of Salt light on.

light--

--off.

like the lighthouse a sailor wants to reach during a storm, and it will stay remote, stay what seems like thousands of miles away for days until my vision shrinks back to where I want it to be and I am not distant anymore and the space between me and the window is not so foreign and terrifying in its seemingly inescapable eternity and I have not been dragged away yet. The flood recedes, the lighthouse gleams. I am still here.

Pious and searching the floor for his flaws, my father, reflected in the window, distant and brilliant in his transparency--

My soul, illuminated by the past resting on the windowpane, too wavering to uphold as the distance shrinks and grows and shrinks once more.

Maria Gelabert ’15

light on.

Pillars of Salt 27