It was Christmas Eve, forty years ago. Maybe forty one. I was seventeen years old. Maybe eighteen. Don't ask me, I don't remember. I wore a crinoline petticoat in the Australian humid heat, hummed carols and knew I was beautiful. It was perfect then.
I remember at seven in the evening, when the afternoon light was starting to turn bluish purple and the street was twinkling up with thousands of dollars of electricity bills, a man walked past my front verandah.
He was in his twenties, a nondescript man carrying a huge pink, silk lampshade with beads and frilling. And, strangely, the lamp was on. A cord trailed behind him.
He stopped at the gutter between my house and the neighbour's, sat his flamboyant pink lamp down on the pavement, and crouched down next to it.
He sat for hours, watching the night make the broken fairy lights all over my verandah glint and flicker. His pink lamp glowed on my eyes until I fell asleep.
On Christmas Day, his pink lamp was still there, but he was gone.
YOU ARE READING
Eveningtime Darlings
PoetryThey sat in the languid eveningtime, singing 'darling, darling, please be mine.'
