Ghost Lights (23 page)

And if he did ever see it, if he ever caught a glimpse of this passing soul, it was because she let him: she let him see the world was full of hurt things. The world was made up of these shifting beings, of glancing pain between them as they moved—these solitary worlds that inhabited the total, the millions of small worlds that made up the host. That was where the pain came from, he thought, it came from the friction between worlds, the brushing past, the shiver of contact—the touch of feeling and unfeeling. The pain and grace of the temporary.

She showed him and he got to see, but by then it was already too late. By then his own world had become very small, and in his own world only the one hurt thing mattered.

He had forgotten all the rest. He never even saw them.

Small, my girl, oh small, small, small. You see? The world shrinks around us: we give it all up for you. We close our eyes to it, we shutter them, we give it away though it is not ours to give.

For you we give up the world.

The author thanks Maria Massie, Tom Mayer, Denise Scarfi, Amy Robbins, Nancy Palmquist,
Don Rifkin, Tara Powers, Anna Oler, Ingsu Liu, and David High for all that they have done.

Copyright © 2011 by Lydia Millet

All rights reserved

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Millet, Lydia, 1968–

Ghost lights : a novel / Lydia Millet. — 1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-393-08171-8 (hardcover)

I. Title.

PS3563.I42175G49 2011

813
’
.54—dc23

2011026502

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