by Sophie Ezzell

A week after you move to Oklahoma for graduate school, you buy a nightlight. You’ve never lived alone before & every sound sounds like danger. The first night, you have a dream

a person is trying to open your front door. You hear the knob rattling & see it twist the moment before you wake up. You have this dream for weeks. The nightlight does not disappear

the dream, but it’s pretty. The light is advertised to project a starred sky onto your ceiling, but it looks more like water. When you look up, you feel like something sunken at the bottom

of a pool, fallen stars floating to the edge like rusted autumn leaves. You can’t help but think of the second day of creation where God split the ocean from the sky. It’s all just blue. Drowning

& falling both just mean dying. Days later, the friend you are in love with visits. You kiss her for the first time beneath this light. Her head is in your lap & you are touching each star that drifts

onto her face & without control your lips open & ask Can I kiss you? I think I’m in love with you & I don’t know what to do & she laughs & she kisses you & you kiss her & you are so happy

you think if someone pulled your heart from your chest they’d find it was as bright as the moon. When your mouths finally part, she holds your face with hands so gentle you want to weep

but worry even just a tear could cause her skin to melt. She tells you that kissing you reminds her of a Talking Heads lyric, that it’s like your mouths are singing into each other. You,

she says, must be the place. Later, you fall asleep together beneath the same stars, certain you have just had your last first kiss. Soon, she leaves Oklahoma to return to West Virginia.

You are sad but you are fine because the dreams of someone breaking into your apartment have ceased. She has christened this place a home & the sounds you were so afraid of

when you first moved in are now sweet. Because now you think they sound like her footsteps. They sound like your beloved walking closer to you.

*

Two years later, you will pack the same nightlight in a suitcase & drive it to a hotel in Arkansas to meet a girl you’ve only spoken to through text messages. She’ll be dark-haired & pretty

& kinder than you think you deserve. You’ll lay with her in white sheets & watch the false stars turn about the room. She’ll be impressed by the nightlight & think you are such a romantic.

You will feel nauseous with guilt because even though you haven’t spoken to your once-love in over a year, you will still feel as if you are engaging in a kind of a betrayal. Which,

of course, you are. When the dark-haired girl asks to kiss you, you won’t object. You’ll hope for the kiss to be magical because if it is, then it will justify the betrayal. But it will just be awkward,

too much of a strange tongue. Still, it will feel good to kiss something else, something new. Something that hasn’t hurt you &, after your first kiss with her, you know never will.

That night, you will toss & turn in the hotel bed. You will jump every time you hear a door open or someone walking down the hall. You’ll watch the stars spin around the room until

the nightlight automatically shuts off & then you’ll just watch the dark.