While an undergraduate at Penn State University, Kayleb Rae Candrilli won the English Department’s 2013 Edward J. Nichols Memorial Award for Fiction, for a piece entitled, “In and Out of the Oven: Six Narratives,” which was then published in Kalliope 2013.
The following excerpt is the concluding section.
6. Shadows of Dolphins
For your first Christmas I bought you a lamp. It was rectangular, the shade boxed around the bulb. Inside plastic dolphins spun slowly around the light, projecting their graceful pirouettes on the wall. It was a rhythmic thing, their jumps. It soothed me as much as it did you, to watch them, free in their inanimacy—shadows full of life.
Years later—the first night leaving you alone to fall asleep—I piled up walls of stuffed animals around you, high protective walls of faux fur. I turned on the lamp and started to walk out of the room and you tore through the wall. You were so determined, pulling me back by the hand. I reconstructed the wall and explained that tonight you were sleeping alone. The moment I left you started screaming; eventually, that you didn’t even have a mommy anymore. I was right outside your door catching the sobs in my hands like fireflies. Your father was holding me there, from going to you. Soon your cries petered away into slow rhythmic breaths, and I left your door taking comfort in the dolphins swimming around you, defending you from all shark-ish nightmares. I took the baby monitor with me everywhere that night. I needed the white noise of your breathing and the fuzzy static of the monitor.
I suppose the evening was expected to be a celebration of freedom for your father and me, but I couldn’t seem to let you from my mind. I don’t choose to imagine myself anywhere but in your room, a sturdier wall than stuffed animals. Thinking back to that night and your father’s arms holding me, arresting me, I know that in an unforgivable way he has always been holding me right behind your door. I realize that I have only been a shadow of a dolphin circling endlessly around you, but I am not inanimate and you, the light, are welcome anywhere. So now, I am asking if you will come with me.
Read Klio’s interview with Kayleb Rae Candrilli here.