HONORABLE MENTION
chompoo k.o.
halo
Every spring, when Mother’s pansies began to bloom into little dens of yellow-eyed faces, the small light at the front of our house would go out like clockwork. It was an old lantern hanging from the roof of our porch situated right above the door, and Mother would keep it on into the late hours so Father, who stayed out at the docks nights at a time, would be able to find his way home past sunset.
Every year, from the moment I realized its luster had steadily grown fainter, I
would wait by my bedroom window to watch as purples and blues slowly washed over the stars, my eyelids thick with twilight when Father and his headlamp would finally begin illuminating the flower bed with a new lightbulb in hand.
This spring, however, the gardens were bare except for the dirt mounds left behind after. Mother dug out last season’s blossoms from the root, the impressions of her gloved fingertips still living as little wells within the stone edgings. When she fell ill this past December, Father and I expected she would get better. But the snow fell heavily that night and the wind’s bitter breath blew hard.
Father locked their bedroom door the next morning and never entered again.
In Mother’s stead, I would turn the light on in the late afternoon and wait for Father to return, glancing out of the window from time to time to see if I could catch his silhouette approaching from the shore. But as the days went by, part of me began to fear, by taking what was hers, I had been keeping him away instead.
So I waited like I did every year for the light to go out. Maybe then, in the darkness, I could see Father walk through the garden with his halo cast over his shoulders, maybe even smell the fragrance of fish and perspiration as he stepped through the front door.
But the lantern stubbornly shone on, and it was my hope, instead, that grew dimmer and dimmer still. It wasn’t until the green leaves began to redden that I forgot, for the first time, to turn the light on. I didn’t know how it slipped my mind. Perhaps it was the beginning of autumn’s chill sweeping through the house, coaxing me into the warm covers of my bed. But I fell asleep, dreaming wistfully, unaware of my Father’s hurried steps stumbling through Mother’s garden under the cover of night.
Father shook me awake, his headlamp glaring into my eyes.
“Son, son,” he called.
I groggily registered my shoulders in his grasp, the urgency in his tone.
“Dad?” I uttered.
He sighed in relief, brushing his hand loosely across my hairline.
“Thank you for showing me the way home.”
I wanted more than anything to meet his gaze. I tried to squint past his lamp, to see the man behind the halo, but all I saw was light.
Chompoo K.O. considers herself an everywhere writer. Born with Thai and Latin American descent, raised in Japan, and currently housed in Idaho, she's not really sure where she's from, but wherever she's going next, please expect Bambam, her mini poodle, to be at her side. This is her first publication.
Next (Fourth Place)>