Proof by lamp, proof by stumble

A-stumble back from a bar, watching my feet to see if they make a straight line.

A lamp lit in a window is proof of another life. Someone else's existence.

Feet stretched onto a stool, the glow of a television. Maybe she's watching Seinfeld reruns. Or some law/cop drama. Maybe she got some shitty news. A break up. A lump. Maybe there's a stack of bills next to her chair and not enough to cover them.

Maybe she's just stumbled home a few minutes before me, unexcited by hook-up prospects, and she's just nuked some mac and cheese or pizza that lived in the fridge. Maybe her beer buzz has her contemplating trips to the mountains where dudes will be hotter and smarter and pizza will taste better at altitude with legs sore from hiking.

Or maybe she sits on her couch, scribbling in a notebook about the guy that just wandered by her window, on the street at closing time; proof of another life, proof against the one a.m. existential aloneness.

Proof by a lamp lit in a house. Proof by the stumble of a passer-by.

Proof

First, the facts: 1) he kept meticulous fishing logs. 2) equaled only by his business ledgers. 3) These logs and ledgers and some photographs are all the proof we have of his existence.

Aaahh, but there's more, you say. There's a house, where his family still lives. True. But a house is not a life.

There's the businesses and property he owned-- wait. Not so much. The names are changed and those who remember are dieing or forgetting. We all forget. You don't get that one.

Boat? Nope. Plaques, certificates... no, sir. Redirect, please.

[pause] [closes eyes] [deep breath]

He walks the sidewalk with quick steps, hands in coat pockets, hat pulled down, glasses on. He laughs at the dinner table. He pours a drink and settles back into an armchair during the holidays.

He was born again! Not a religious conversion, actually reborn, in the 1940s, the 1970s, the 2000s. You can see his smile, his gait, his mannerisms in each. I swear to you with a voice that contains his and look at you with eyes that include his, that he walks with us, and through us and in us.

And when we are gathered, and telling stories, he sits with us, and if you took the various smiles from among us, you could reconstruct his, but you don't need to, because he is there. He did live. He does live. We are his proof.

[smiles] [turns] [walks back to table]

I have nothing further.