Leave the light on, Darling

You used to leave the light on in the hallway. At about two thirty a.m the bulb would become exhausted, and from then on it would flicker. I used to watch it when I couldn't sleep. Eighteen seconds peace, then fade. Twelve seconds later, when the light had dimmed noticeably, it would begin to flicker, like someone was willing it to continue, but it wasn't sure if it had the stamina. Twenty seconds of this, one second of darkness before it would jump back to it's full strength.

You were always a deeper sleeper than you thought. I told you that we ought to get the light fixed, it just wasn't safe anymore.
You asked me what light I was talking about.
'You know, the flickering one in the hallway?'
'In the hallway? That doesn't flicker, does it?'
For half the night. Five hours. You never noticed it because I'd always get up just before you and turn it off.
'Oh. It can't be that bad though? I mean, I haven't woken up to it, and I wake up to everything.'
Babies crying, yes. The garbage truck coming two hours early. The time when the lady two houses down, Mrs. Hendricks, had a heart attack or a stroke or something and the ambulances came screeching past our house. When the days became longer, the light creeping thought the blinds earlier than you were used to. But not this light.

Five hours of this continuous cycle. I counted it once, one night that it was too hot to sleep. Fifty one seconds a cycle. Sixty minutes each hour. Three hundred minutes. Five hundred and eighty nine times a night. It's a wonder I wasn't ever driven mad by it.

One evening I took the light out. You were at your sisters and I had come home late from work. The funny thing is that though you never noticed its absence, I couldn't sleep without it, without its sizzling pulse, and I wondered how deep then the madness had became.