TRANSLUCENT MARBLE

I lie on the couch downstairs, watching a cable melodrama while I take short, dense drags from an unfiltered Lucky Strike. It's already half past eight and the low sun is shooting a slender column of gray-yellow light across the living room, just above my chest. Smoke twirls off the cigarette through the fingers of my other hand. Slowly the column swallows it up. With each minute, the angle of the sunlight widens and the block of translucent marble, glowing and churning, inches toward the ceiling. Before long the sun sets and the room fades back into a watery blue.