Before the lights come on
Faces lit by the running film, while a beam of light cuts through the dust of the theatre. You are sitting at the back when your life begins on the screen, but you don't yet know it is yours.
Keys in the lock. You recognise the sound: the eight o'clock one. You already know who is about to walk in, before the door even opens.
There is the little girl you were. You watch her looking for her place, feeling ashamed over some small thing, pretending not to be afraid. She is smaller than you remembered.
Then come the departures, the people chosen badly, the words spoken when it would have been better to wait. Lifelong friendships woven through broken stories. You see her come home one evening and stop for a few minutes on the stairs outside the building. You remember that time. You never told anyone how hard it was.
Now you would go to her. You would hold her.
Meanwhile the house filled with smells and the windows fogged up. On the table, the usual flowered tablecloth. Then a voice would call: “It's ready, come and eat!”
You remember the taste of sauce mopped up with bread. Someone tasted from the pot, someone else argued over how much salt to add. And a laugh would start in the kitchen and travel all the way to the room where you were.
So you carried on with whatever you were doing. That laugh belonged to the house, like the table and the windows. You heard it every day.
You had learned to recognise the footsteps of the people you loved, to know how they were from the way they closed a door. All that knowledge lived inside you without your ever thinking about it.
Now you try to remember a voice and realise that some words have stayed clear, others are lost. You would want back even the ones that used to annoy you.
On the screen someone gets up to fetch the bread. Someone else pulls a chair closer. You watch those people doing what they did for years, while you were waiting to grow up, to leave, to start your life.
And you hope that scene lasts a little longer.
There is someone, sitting at the table, you would like to look at one last time.
Questions for reflection
Which voice would you like to hear one more time?
What is happening to you now that one day you will want to remember?
Who would you like beside you when the lights come on?
