Evening was settling over town in the way a blanket thrown over a bed slowly settles over it – softly, and with a few wrinkles of sunlight. I had run to my car for some things I’d forgotten and when I was returning I looked up at the back of the tri-colored building and the dozens of windows that led to other peoples’ lives. Most preferred the privacy of a drawn blind, but a few had them pulled all the way to the top, baring a small rectangle of their lives to the world. It was in one of these that I saw the bare bulb.

The shade had been removed from a lamp and it had been placed to the side of one of the deep sills the building provided. The light was warm, incandescent, and it filled the window and illuminated the room behind it. The lamp itself was old, the faux-brass plating chipped or tarnished. The room beyond the lamp was minimal – bare walls, the ceiling, and maybe a door frame were all that were visible. No matter how much the eye wandered, it always returned to the bare bulb. The shade could no longer hide the bulb’s form, nor could it control how brightly the bulb shined anymore. The bulb was released, untethered, set free to announce to the world what it was and what it wanted to be at the time of the night when it was most likely to be seen.

I couldn’t stand too long in the parking lot’s cold prairie wind, so I went back inside and left the bare bulb to shine and announce itself to the world. Hopefully others would notice it too. Did its owner understand how it looked to those outside? That it was a beacon to people with imaginative minds searching for warmth on a cold, windy day?