The following piece is published as part of our TLM Young Writers series, a dedicated section of The London Magazine‘s website which showcases the work of exceptional young talent aged between 13-21, from the UK and beyond.

Regina Rosenfeld

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The Heaviest Weight We Bear

That day in the lamp shop, surrounded by trinkets and sheen,

there were so many bulbs with cracks and missing shards

that for a second, I wished I could repair their damage,

like the way a surgeon can cauterize even the faintest of wounds.

Because if they could be renewed, each hairline fracture lacquered

and levelled, then what past injuries could not be mended?

And as I roamed the aisles, while somewhere a radiator clanked

too loudly, and everything was cast by a faint glow,

I thought about how I’d been hoping to undergo a transformation

into a different self, one whose surface didn’t need

to be sanded to be smooth to the touch,

a place so full of tenderness that even rivers would touch gently

at the lip of my shore. Still, I’ve seen how hope is the heaviest

weight we bear. I know that now. For so long, I’ve been taught

that wishing could not undo what has already been injured,

could not remove what splinters our lives already hold.

Oh, I know there’s so much loss. I know this world could so easily

be devastated beyond remedy, a dark cove with its too many jagged

edges. But when I wondered about one of the lamps—

how it could possibly work since its bulb was serrated and sharp,

and I was sure its brightness would be diminished. I learned,

as I flipped its switch and speckled dots reflected from each wall

onto the next, the thing about light is that it’s not afraid

to be broken or unformed: you see, it knows it can never

truly be left shattered, only reshaped.

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Regina Rosenfeld is a nineteen-year-old writer living in New York City. She attends Barnard College of Columbia University and is an editor at the Pine Hills Review.

 

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