HALOGEN
I was in that apartment downtown. Our place on Main that I always used to covet when I visited the TV star and her son before it was ours. But I was alone, and I couldn’t get any lights on. No matter how many times I tried, the switch wouldn’t move—bruising my fingers, bending bone. It was so dark. I just wanted to flick on the lamp, see it again like it was.
In the dream, you were gone—out only, back shortly—but even in the dim, I could see the mess. So I waited there like a luna moth, pinned like you wanted. I laid checkered tea towels out to dry and padded, dream-foot, from room to cluttered room, trying to see us in the dark.
I lay down alone on the flannel bedspread, the mattress floorbound in the middle of the room where you always said it looked better. It was your house, really.
When you came in, you came close and brought bright hot glare. You turned on the lamp. I left the real one behind in our place on Main. Its enamouring green folds, its iridescent tassels. I squinted and cast my eyes to the rose-printed sheets under your elbow and my ribs. All too bright to look at head-on. Because I wasn’t looking, you peppered my face in tiny biting kisses. You tasted like nothing because I don’t love you like that in the daylight.
In the tenebrous haze, in the maze of things that might have once been mine, your tongue slipped under mine and forked open. I could tell you’d gotten that second surgery you’d talked about once on a starlit riverbank, a joint fizzling between us. In the dream, you weren’t a smoker and you kissed with your eyes closed.
I don’t want you like that, but in the dream I said yes. Your hips turned to smoke above mine, your ten-thousand-dollar tattoos dissolving into halogen light.
Only your tongue stayed real as you mapped my face with snake kisses and found the wet mouth at its center. Then you reached deeper, your tensile hands grabbed the back of my head, cradling me like I might break—like shattering in your grip could be a good thing. Like you wanted to be closer, inside my skin, behind my teeth, between them.
In the dream, I didn’t mind. I kissed you back, I did, but I don’t really love you like that—do I? I don’t really love you at all.
The light clicks off.
I sit up.
My open window bleeds cool air and streetlight onto the bed I shoved against the wall. Patterns of leaves lap at my bare arms. The green tasselled lamp with the finicky toggle is long gone, left in your place on Main because I don’t really want you like that.
No.
All I want is for the lights to come on when it’s my fingers on the switch.
Photos by Charlie Zacks.
SALLY CUNNINGHAM:
“HALOGEN” was edited by Aaron Bauman and Jack Schaaf.
MAXWELL NORMAN’S ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Radical Transparency - Supplements EP (2025)
This one’s personal. No better proof that Poughkeepsie is the new Brooklyn than the work of Radical Transparency, whose new debut EP “Supplements” packages house-infused and club-ready loosies into a fun sized package. The skittering snares on “skinned,” the Kaytranada groove on “future proof,” and the chopped vocal sample dominating “being explicit” (seemingly an ironic title considering the song’s garbled nature) all recall the records of yesteryear’s downtown. If you want the dance floor ecstasy of Fcukers or Freakquencies without having to deal with NYC’s most obnoxious residents, consider the beautiful Hudson Valley and Radical Transparency instead. Bright things ahead for these guys!