Little Lights in my Heart - phan

Little Lights in my Heart

We’re born with millions 
Of little lights shining in the dark 
And they show us the way.
One lights up, every time you feel love in your heart 
One dies when it moves away.

 

I was seven when Phil first told me about the lights. The little lights, he called them. We were in the park where we’d first met three years earlier; only for the first time ever our parents had let us come alone. I knew Phil’s mum was watching from the window and I was pretty sure Phil knew too but neither of us said anything. We headed straight for the tunnel and clambered into the sheltered darkness with a ‘whoop’ that echoed off the tin walls. It was small and narrow and smelt strongly of cheap metal and grass, but to us it was a fortress. Phil sat at one end: small enough to cross his legs but too tall to sit up straight so his neck was bent down, his back curved and his silent blue eyes in mine. I leant against the smooth metal hugging my knees to my chest and smiling. I used to smile a lot when I was little, I think that’s why Phil liked me.

Mostly I talked and he listened, but that was okay. I would go on for hours about my day and my adventures and my plans for the future and he wouldn’t say anything at all. And then sometimes he’d speak and I’d fall instantly silent and listen, because when he spoke magic poured from his lips.

“We’re full of lights.” He said, interrupting my theory as to how Mrs Jacobs had to be a witch, his words echoing around the tunnel.

“What d’you mean?” I asked.

“I think when we’re born we must have loads and loads because babies are sweet and lovely and stuff, but then the lights go out one by one as we get old. And that’s why grownups are sad all the time and walk around all frowny and hardly ever smile. But kids are always happy. And then teenagers are sometimes happy but sometimes their lights go out and they get really sad and shout and cry a lot. By the time you get to be a grownup most of your brightest lights have burned out so you go to work because you’re not light enough to have fun anymore so you work boringly and you make babies so that you can see their lights all bright and new which lights up a few more little ones to help you keep happy again for a while. And eventually all your lights burn out, and then you die. You might not actually die, but you’re completely pitch black dark inside so it’s the same thing really. That’s why some people never smile. Their lights have all gone out and they’re dead but their bodies are still going so they’re just walking around waiting for the bodies to catch up. And sometimes the lights go out all in a rush and the people get really sad because they still remember how bright they were but they can’t get them back and that’s when people kill themselves. They don’t want to be a dead person in a body.”

I just stared at him, my thumb in my mouth. Eventually, I nodded. He didn’t say anything and I didn’t either. We just sat together in a metal tube in the middle of a greying play park in a suburban town that was nothing remarkable; graffiti coated and peeling, metal squealing and swings rusting. But to me, that tunnel was made of solid silver shining in a park of gold and green.

~

We walked home from school together every day without fail, bags swinging at our sides and books under our arms. The next time I brought up the lights was on a day like this - mid-autumn at the beginning of year eight. I was talking, Phil was listening. I was telling him about Mr. Chambers committing suicide in the locker rooms right before the new year sevens had PE and how we’d heard the screams three corridors down.

“I think, I think his lights must have all gone out. You know. Because his wife cheated on him and their kid got taken into care and he was going to be fired for being sad all the time and forgetting stuff. Like, you know, how you said when we were little?” I was silent, waiting for him to speak.