Counting the Lights Along the Coast Road
A night drive, and the porch lights that are still left burning.
Every porch light on a dark coast road is a small, specific claim: someone still lives here, and wants you to know it.
The coast road runs forty miles between two towns with almost nothing between them, and at night the only proof anyone still lives out there is the porch lights, spaced unevenly, some steady and some flickering on a bad connection.
I started counting them on a whim during a late drive home and now I cannot stop. Thirty-one the first night. Twenty-eight the second, though I do not know if two houses went dark for good or just for one evening.
A friend who grew up out there told me the lights used to mean something more specific - a widow signaling she was still up, a fisherman signaling he had not come in yet. Now they mostly just mean a light switch someone forgot.
