The Importance of Lighting in Relationships
By Rachel Laverdiere
Stage 1: Electric Lights
When considering new relationships, ensure optimal lighting. Bright electric lamps highlight cobwebs and other unsightly refuse—including ghosts—and aid in the discovery of lingerie abandoned in the bottom bureau drawer, baggage stashed in his master bedroom closet.
Warning: Do not fall under his charm before spending sufficient time in harsh lighting. Study your potential companion’s features. Determine whether he has shifty eyes. Do not ignore small twitches, ticks or subtle shadows. Upon returning from powdering your nose, confirm he hasn’t tampered with the dimmer switch. Do not get caught in the dark.
Disclaimer: Spend evenings on bright public patios with those who know him well. Red flags will appear. If he has few close friends, he must be hiding something. Like corpses in his basement. Remember what you are looking for.
Stage 2: Candlelight
Baby-step your way from electric lighting to candlelight once you determine the relationship is worthy of pursuit. Proceed with caution. The ambiance adds romantic undertones, softens features and conversations and forces lovers to lean toward murmurs.
Warning: Do not over-spritz his gift of cheap imitation cherry blossom perfume nor overextend yourself to decipher mumbled words, or you risk singeing your eyelashes. Insist he speak up, repeat, speak plainly. Never assume truths spill from his lips if your gut insists otherwise.
Disclaimer: Consider the amount of wine you’ve consumed before allowing the flame to grow. A blaze burned to a certain brightness is near impossible to extinguish.
Stage 3: Moonlight
By the light of the moon, you’ll believe he makes the future glow. And the sex will be incredible! Better enjoy it while it lasts because soon enough you’ll yearn for sleep before the earth swallows the sun.
Warning: He’ll promise you the universe, swear he hung the moon among the stars. Beware the dimming of stars drained by a hefty mortgage, his child support payments and jalopy forever-in-need-of-repair. The man sleeping next to you will become a stranger. His snoring will push you to sprawl out in the spare bedroom where your mind drifts back to a man you once knew well. He smelled of fresh rain and ink, and Oh! how his eyes twinkled when he made you laugh…
Disclaimer: Lightning often strikes in troubled seasons. Is it your fault that your heart fluttered? That a flush bloomed on your cheeks? You cannot deny batting your lashes, nibbling your freshly glossed lips. Or that when his hand brushed your thigh, you squeezed your knees together and revelled in the jolt.
Stage 4: Gaslight
Propose a camping trip to rekindle your moonlight desires. Play dice by the glow of kerosene. Morning will find you at a campfire where coffee percolates, bacon sizzles and beans pop in their tin.
Warning: Study the 1944 movie Gaslight. Wife asks Husband about the flickering lamps. Husband, who secretly and repeatedly dims and brightens the lanterns, accuses her of having a wild imagination. Wife doubts her sanity. Will she discover Husband’s the demented one?
Disclaimer: Say you have a tiff. After you’ve poked holes into his misstatements, take your coffee into the camper. Read while he chugs another beer and sulks by the fire. Grumbling, he fumbles in and snatches his keys. You ask where he’s going, but his response is the flicker of sunlight on a slamming door, the spit of gravel as he drives away. He wanted your attention? He’s got it.
Stage 5: Emergency Lighting and Exit Signs
Emergency lights are standard safety feature in modern high-stakes relationships. These battery-charged devices are automatically activated by a power warpage. Especially if one partner is an egocentric in disguise. Tell me you made him sign that pre-nup.
Warning: Emergency lighting work for minimal time. Locate the nearest exit. Do not fret over how you’ll explain to your mother how you’re leaving another marriage. Burying your head in the sand is easier, but eventually you would suffocate.
Disclaimer: For optimal security, consider adding sirens. Neighbours who witness the commotion will confirm that danger lurks—even when he insists it doesn’t.
About the Author:
Rachel Laverdiere is a language instructor and writer from southern Saskatchewan. Her poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction pieces are most recently published or forthcoming in journals such as filling Station, Blank Spaces, Entropy, Atlas and Alice, and Barren Magazine. Her flash fiction was shortlisted for the Geist 2015 Short Long-Distance Writing Contest.
About Weekly Flash Prose and Poetry:
CutBank Online features one work of flash prose or prose poetry every Monday. Submissions are free and open year-round. Send us your best work of 750 words or less at https://cutbank.submittable.com/submit.