The Collection of Sunlight

I was hired to collect what was left of the light.

At first it was too fragile. I didn’t understand the way it clung to shards of old glass and drifted through dust like lost scriptures. Eventually I learned how to handle it, and now I keep it in jars labelled with years that no longer mean anything.

When the others sleep, I open them. The light moves, restless, as if it remembers the fields and faces it is meant for. I’m the only one of us who can hear the way it hums, who can understand it. It sings that bodies still want to be seen in the light.

I send my findings into the dark.