All the Light We Chased

    by Huina Zheng

When the optical engineer was a child, he and his father set out on a sketching odyssey. His father later referred to it as a father-son venture, his voice deep and resonant, echoing like the earth’s heartbeat, just us two, son. Yet, the optical engineer remembered the whisper of paper unfolding, the brush’s caress on the palette, and the enigmatic hues of works-in-progress under the dim glow of their modest hotel haven. He remembered the steadfast easel, the canvas cradled by his father’s rugged hands, swathed in cloth, the dawn’s first light, dusk’s fiery curtain, the mountain’s crisp breath, and wildflowers’ perfume. He remembered falling asleep on a wobbly bed, next to his smoke-scented father, with only steamed buns and pickled vegetables for dinner. He remembered that dusk, a quaint town bathed in warm light, their quest for art supplies, his father’s voice steady, we’re here for the light, and the ensuing creation, fueled by an old, trembling lamp’s beam, nurturing his dreams.

The moon was more serene and elegant than the optical engineer ever grasped. He pressed his forehead against the window’s mesh, gazing up at the moon, leaving soft red imprints. His father’s brush pirouetted on canvas, and as it did, he whispered secrets, our souls are woven from light and color.

The optical engineer was in the lab when his father succumbed to a stroke. It was his first year as an optical engineer, amidst the calm azure flicker of laser research. The optical engineer honored his father’s wishes, nightly video-calling home, sharing his luminous quest, dispatching unsigned moon sketches to his secret affection. Every night after completing his experiments, he would watch the moon, capturing its gentle radiance, each stroke a silent testament to his emotions. He caressed each sketch, placed the artwork into an envelope, sent it to the boy he longed for, day and night. His colleagues discussed optical principles and the latest technology trends. One colleague said, love for this field feels like a dance with light, peeling back its veils, then continued their research, musing on the future they were carving from light.

The phone’s ring cleaved the night, his stepmother’s voice, usually absent at this hour, now urgent, trembled, your father.

Her words were fragmented, struggling, your father, he, he.

Until finally, your father had a stroke, paralyzed, sightless, voiceless.

Mute and unable to see, his father’s eyes, once keen on the mysteries of light and shadow, had lost their light. In a sterile room where his father lay, the optical engineer’s sketches lay unseen. With the air thick with disinfectant and the harsh fluorescent light of the lamps casting a cold glow, everything seemed unreal. The entire autumn unfolded in this surreal way.

The optical engineer drove through the night. The sky outside was pitch black, no gentle moon, no twinkling stars, no glimmer of light to accompany him.

The optical engineer remembered returning from their artistic pilgrimage, he found their humble abode, sunlight shy at the threshold, the living room shrouded in dimness, the air stagnant. His stepmother, amidst the kitchen’s hustle, the bittersweet aroma of greens mingling with oil, spared them a glance, wash up, dinner’s nearly done.

The optical engineer walked into his room, where a faint ray of sunshine sneaked through the curtain gap, illuminating the desk. There, lay a moon-shaped handcrafted lamp, a gift from the boy he had a crush on. The optical engineer caressed it, feeling as if he could sense the boy’s warm touch and his tender gaze.

No matter the phase, remember, there’s a light kept for you, the boy had said when he gifted the lamp. Months later, after attending his father’s funeral and returning to the empty house, the optical engineer saw the moon lamp again. The boy’s words echoed in the empty room: light is always kept, just for you.

Bio :Huina Zheng, a distinction M.A. in English studies holder, works as a college essay coach. She's also an editor at Bewildering Stories. Her stories have been published in Baltimore Review, Variant Literature, Midway Journal and others.Her work has been nominated twice for both the Pushcart and Best of The Net. She resides in Guangzhou, China with her husband and daughter.

Choirboy

    by Moss Springmeyer

Our voices soared towards heaven, the boys’ choir. I could hear the true music in my head, as my voice glided ever so close to it, sometimes all of us together. Every morning we started with exercises, then practices, when the singing would be interrupted or repeated to bring someone closer to the music. Then five or six precious hymns with no interruptions to send us exalted into the day. By evening I would be singing in the shower and itching for the morning. Twice a week we sang in the evening service, and Sunday morning was the crown of the week. I could feel the choir lifting the congregation in the glorious Hymns Ancient and Modern.

I have heard other boys disparage heaven, saying it must be boring with nothing to do but worship God. Now, I am not sure about God, but heaven must be like those moments when the organ was sounding through my very bones and every pointed arch of the church was filled with our celestial voices. While we live, that ecstasy is brief, but it is very like heaven, or perhaps it is heaven. Angels differ from our mortal selves, for they experience it eternally.

I wonder, do we sing the true music in Heaven? Or is our offering not just the sound we produce but the very effort of willing toward perfection without marring that by struggle.

It would have been easier if I had just died before my voice changed. My same-age companions had been disappearing one by one for about a year. Somehow, I felt that it would not happen to me. First those little moments of harshness as I reached and stretched and struggled for a note I could no longer hit. Then, one afternoon practice, the choirmaster asked me to stay on. Something was wrong. The other boys left a bubble of space around me as they departed. My mother came. They exchanged courtesies. The choirmaster said, “I’m sorry but his voice is changing. He can no longer sing in the choir.” She protested that I sang in the shower as beautifully as ever. I protested that I just had a touch of a cold. But I think we both knew it wasn’t true.

Was the rage and sorrow and loss what Lucifer felt? My English teacher gave me a copy of Paradise Lost, which I treasure to this day. In my heart, I kept protesting that I’d done nothing wrong, done nothing to deserve having that near- perfection torn from me. I hated people with ordinary voices as I never had before. I hated God, who had inflicted this torture on me. I couldn’t even roar with rage, because the voice that would roar was not my precious real voice but only that strander’s voice that had invaded me. This alien object making alien sounds had been thrust into me where the glory used to be.  I had violent and terrible thoughts about tearing out “my” throat. I was no longer a unitary being, I had been fragmented, mutilated!

The high school football star no college wants must feel something similar, he was royalty one day and abandoned, empty-handed the next.

I think that for most people the onset of desire must be a wonderful opening of worlds and possibilities of joy they had never dreamed of. For me, it coincided with my terrible loss. I blamed the loss on the onset of desire and on a growth spurt that gained me six inches in a year. Learning to play piano transported me out of myself into the universe of music, at least from time to time.

I no longer rage, but a pang of grief stabs me from time to time, at unexpected moments. I must not have banished God entirely, because I still read Paradise Lost with deep feeling. I have built a constructive and satisfying life as a doctor, healing those things that can be healed. I play and listen to instrumental music without pain, sometimes with delight. I accepted my height and stopped stooping. I didn’t really accept desire as springing from myself, rather than an alien intrusion, until college. Joys in my marriage and my children are deep seated. But it would be a lie to say I have “moved on”, rather, I both love my new life and also trail chords of glory only I can hear.