She asked herself, how is possible to be at once enclosed and illuminated.

She asked herself, how is it possible to be at once enclosed and illuminated.

—Ann Lauterbach (A Golden Shovel) 

The daylight dissipates again, aloof, casual as always out there beyond the door, still she

gathers her children from sofas, forces them in front of the window they never asked

for, why would they, after all, sand was turned to glass ages ago. She reminds herself

that each day is a series of insignificant marvels, dusk and doors and windows—how

did we lose the demon shine and angel luster? The daily exuberance, shifting color, is

not divine or magic, is merely a natural repetitive process, like, say, the water cycle; it

too has endlessly returning stages, as her son explained to her recently, several possible

foreseen forms: groundwater, condensation, rain, runoff. At the window, he asks her to 

define gravity. They Google it. Turns out it’s the bending of spacetime. Should there be

a hyphen there? She snags on technicalities, forgets how glass is made, tries gazing at

the unseeable curve of the solid universe, leaves the window for the door, but then once

outside, under the colorless evening, lungs seem to shrink, she imagines them enclosed

by golden ribs to comfort herself, knows she’s breathing last week’s groundwater, and

the porch light comes on untouched as it senses the dark, and now she is illuminated.