Like Stained Glass

(this is a micro-fiction piece that I accidentally wrote while I was trying to write a poem lol)


She held the flashlight against the inside of her palm,
just to prove that the bones and veins were all there,
glowing reddish pink with lines of black running through.

In the dark of the windowless bathroom, the glow was brighter than the nightlight she still used in her room.

She was ten - she stopped sucking her thumb at seven, a few years later than was socially acceptable. She liked the salty bitterness of it, the way her thumbpad would crinkle into raisiny wrinkles after all the salt had been sucked out.

After that night in the bathroom, she didn't need a nightlight anymore, because all she had to do to conquer the dark was lift her left hand towards the ceiling, and let the glow it held suffice.

She slept on her side, with her hand tucked beneath her head to cradle her cheek. Her nightlight was out, and the moon was new. In her sleep, her face seemed to radiate a rosy brilliance, filling her room with a soft, dim light.

She was ten. Her father had told her when she was younger that on full moon nights God was using a night light too. She thought that meant that God knew we needed the moon, needed the light, so He took pity on us. But later she knew it meant that even God is afraid of the dark sometimes. Even God needs a nightlight, sometimes - even God.

She wondered what color God's hand glowed when He held it to the moon. If His veins glowed blue or gold or if He had veins at all - Maybe His veins cast light instead of shadow, peeking out in specks through the dark to land on her wall through the sheer curtain in her bedroom window.

In the morning, after she left for school, her mother turned down the bed and and found a flashlight under the pillow, still switched to "ON". But when she opened it to replace the surely run-out batteries, she found the flashlight was empty.