Still Life for God #8: Mobile
by MJ Young
At the open house the realtor called it a bonus room. Scuffed hardwood floors, dusty crown molding, olive walls and no closet. It seemed appropriate. The listing suggested an office. The realtor suggested a fitness room. A nursery. The two of us will never have children, we decided early on. The night we received the apartment’s keys we were eager to use them, like coins clasped tight in our hands, carefully pocketed as we entered. Neither carried the other inside. He brought taper candles for the windowsills, twin glasses, a bottle of something we could both drink. We walked from room to room, imagining transformations. His teal floral runner in the hall. My museum postcards framed and hung beside the kitchen window. For the bonus room I chose an old mobile from a cardboard box of ornaments I’d brought—ascending angels spiraling around an incandescent bulb turned star, each seraph laden with a horn. I hung it from an old and painted-over hook in the ceiling so we were surrounded by shadows of heavenly heralds, pronouncing us home. We sat under one of the curtainless windows and he poured a drink for each of us. As the mobile spun in that near-empty dim, the seraphs stretched, spreading feathered wings to the ceiling, our skin, gracing the space. Looking at him, I was afraid. Would he see me better in this light we now shared? Would he give the distance between us Your name? Later, when the room became an office, I took the mobile down and brought it back to my parents’ house. Or I put it into storage. Or I donated it. Still, in this room that will never be a nursery, I remember that sublime fear of being seen loving You and having nowhere to hide.
This poem is in response to The Light Within by Karl J. Kuerner (1996)
WOW. Just WOW!