Before, after.It rained this morning. In the afternoon, the sun...

Before, after.

It rained this morning. In the afternoon, the sun did its
best to press through the thickness – not clouds, it didn’t seem, more an extra layer, as
though the sky had pulled a sheet over itself, like light was trying to shine through
light. The sky was white-grey in the way December skies are white-grey and the
sun, when it presses through, takes on a look more lunar, pale, like silver
skin stretched across a loin.

I’d been crouching over a showerbed all morning, grouting
tiles. My view was floorward. The room was warm and dim. I left the bathroom
and walked into the livingroom we’d made with all the windows we’d put in and
light was pouring through, magic, wet, post-winter-rain light. I gasped and
gushed, look, oh my gosh, the light!
The man whose house it is – whose life we’ve been a part of off and on for
months now as the job has expanded and contracted, as we’ve cut holes into the
side of his house, built new rooms, brought the light in – he sat on a couch in
the corner. “I know, I know,” he said, “it’s beautiful.” We both looked out and
looked how the light entered in. “My mother had an expression,” he said. “I don’t
remember the Russian, but for light like this, she said the witch’s daughter is
getting married.”

She was a proud bride today, with a supernatural glow.