There are many things I should never have said, but it is too late, for I have said them. Words seem to flow like honey from its dripper, slow and languid, yet somehow fast in a great contradiction, falling to the floor without anything to stop it, or to put it all back and seal away the jar.

 

I remember lying in my bed one night, silent and still, thoughts galloping in my head through open fields and thick air with a scorching sun. Without cause, someone had declared their love aloud, and it took me a moment to realize it was I who had uttered it. I covered my mouth. I could not take that back, the validity of the statement far too real for me to take in. I would never say it again, not even to he who I had wished to say it to. Some words have too much meaning to be told.

 

It was my own bitter self-centeredness that led me to tell Milly what I told her. It was my fault, what became of her. I am the one to blame. And even in that, am I still being selfish? Am I thinking myself greater in these grand schemes of events, than the girl herself who unknowingly conducted them?

 

I cannot think of this now. It’s too awful to dwell on.

 

But are our faults to be counted, in the end? Shall I list all mine out like scribe to a king, painstakingly and without a detail amiss? Every sin, no matter how small the scar?

 

Nevertheless, whatever I muse holds nothing to what has already been done.

 

The horrid thing is that I can still remember it so clearly, with such vivacity I am sure I shall bare it in my mind until I am no more. It is bright among the cloudy parts of my memory — my fourteenth birthday. I was so foolishly happy then.

 

I wish I had died that day.

 

I can recount the candles, their fiery glow strong among our walls. The walls of our house, of our parlor, and the walls we built to forget our crumbling world. There were so many colors.

 

I can see us laughing, giggling at something Uncle must have muttered, cheering at the candles on the cake. Taking my cousins’ hands and singing songs loudly, ignorant of the fragile faces of our parents. We frowned when told we could not go outside. It wasn’t fair! Why should we stay in such a stuffy old room when we could play amongst the stale grass and rocky paths? In their adamancy, I now know they saved us from a million burdens they chose to bare.

 

Still, they smiled down at us and even Mother had chuckled a bit to herself when Ralphie tried to show off some tricks he’d learned down by the docks, and unceremoniously fell flat on his face.

 

But then came the time for presents. Milly held hers out to me, wrapped with tin foil and brittle paper bags. I could not discern the wink and grin on her face, so without any hesitation, I opened it.

 

We had been playing by the junkyard down the street, sorting through soiled napkins and empty tins. Sometimes, we would find treasures of all sorts: an old button, the neck of a broken vase we would use to hunt rats, a bus ticket stub... There was nothing we could not find that could not be used to amuse ourselves with. On that day in particular, we had been lying among the scrap metal the toddlers had deemed 'Mt. Rust,' looking up at the constant cloudy sky, whispering dangerous secrets.

 

"What do you want for your birthday?" Milly said softly to me, small blonde head on my shoulder.

 

I smiled wistfully, as if in a dream. “Light."

 

She turned to face me. "Light? But we have tons of light here!"

 

"No, you've misunderstood," I said.

 

"Oh," she said. She looked away. "You mean that."

 

I had seen one, once. It was just a glimpse, but it had been enough to set my heart pounding, ears thick with the drumming in my mind. I was out with my mother, walking down the dusty road that lead to the wells, when someone came up to us from beyond a hill.

 

His face had been dim, and he spoke to my mother with hushed words. She nodded, but her mouth did not take any form. Instead, she reached out a thin arm hesitantly, peeling back the latch on his satchel. She took one look, then pushed him away, offering him angry words mixed with something I could not understand. Surprise? Horror? I could not tell.

 

But I had seen what he had found in that bag before she sent him on his way and we collected our daily rations. It was made of thin glass, burned black on the top - it was unmistakably a little bulb of light. Broken, but still a symbol of something lost, something we had lost countless times ago.

 

There was no electricity in our village. Even that had been taken away from us. For the good of all, they had said. That no man should have any more than his brother.

 

Then why, I wanted to ask them, why were we living in such filth and they in such glorious wonder we couldn’t possibly dream of?

 

For the good of all, they might reply. For the good of all.

 

So when I had told Milly what I had wished for my birthday, I had been telling the outmost truth. Yet I had no idea she would one day find one in the trash heaps and wrap it so delicately and beautifully, that it would be on the table of other odds and ends I could, from that day on, call my own.

 

I had opened her gift without hesitancy, smile still on my face. When I saw what it was, the smile was still there, but it was stuck somehow, and it was like the candles in the room had all faded to a dullness, letting the black of the outdoors creep in through every lonely nook and cranny.

 

From then on, it was a blur. Parents started shouting, accusing this and that, trying to pry the bulb from my arms, but I wouldn’t let them, it was mine, it was given to me. Father insisted that I didn’t understand, and though I did not know what the world was like I knew that something given could not be returned and that it was mine, this little ball of what could be filled with such brightness.

 

He motioned for everyone to be quiet, and to my surprise, they listened. He looked at me carefully, as if he were thinking very hard at the words he was trying to form. Where did you get this? he had asked. Who was the one that gave you this cursed gift?

 

I had answered honestly.

 

Instantly, I regretted it.

 

Her parents had remained stoic, her own father with a firm hand on her shoulder. I can remember her seeming so confused, her face contorted in a want, a deep need to understand what was going on.

 

I guess her father was torn. He worked at the Centre. It was his job to report misbehavior. But his daughter….

 

Her mother cried when he took his arm off Milly’s shoulder. There was nothing she could have done.

 

They walked out together, Milly’s face still so unsure.

 

I never saw her again and there is no doubt in my mind that I never will.

 

I never saw a lightbulb ever again, either.

 

For the good of all, they said. The ‘all,’ I suppose, they never did specify.

 

I have lived in this house for so many years. It is so cold. My parents are gone. Milly’s are, too. Another person leaves, come every passing day. I do not know where they go.

 

I dream in light, sometimes. I dream of seas and buildings and a strange, warm glow. Someday, this will no longer be a dream. There is already talk of it. A change in the air, a sort of charge that travels from person to person as though they were a wire. What it will spark, no one can quite tell.

 

There is talk of a resistance. Even that word sounds strange on our tongues. But there are so few of us left, what more can we give? For the freedom we seek, there are some who would give up their lives, for what worth do they have under those who grow wealthy and portly from our toils?

 

Will we survive? Will we win?

 

All I know is that come change or utter defeat… It will be bright.