Still a Porch Light On
written by: Michael Ridinger
There’s a chair on the porch
that knows more prayers than most churches.
It’s got one bad leg,
leans a little to the left
like an old man listening hard
for something the wind forgot to say.
I’ve sat in that chair
with blood in my mouth from biting back words,
with rent due,
with a phone that stayed silent so long
it got personal.
I’ve watched midnight
come in like a debt collector—
slow shoes on gravel,
a knock you pretend not to hear,
that cold hand on the latch.
And brother, sister, stranger—
whoever you are
with your shoes still on at three in the morning,
staring at the ceiling
like it owes you an explanation—
listen.
The dark is a slick-talking bastard.
It’ll pull up a stool beside you
and talk soft.
Tell you the world’s already moved on.
Tell you your name has gotten too heavy
for anybody else to carry.
Tell you silence is mercy
and endings are clean.
But the dark lies
the way drunks lie in beautiful sentences—
with just enough music in it
to make ruin sound holy.
Don’t buy it.
I knew a man once
who kept a revolver in a sock drawer
and grief folded in his back pocket
like an unpaid bill.
He smiled at barbecues.
Fixed everybody’s brakes.
Never missed work.
Had a laugh like thunder
rolling over bad land.
One winter
he came close—
closer than breath to glass.
Said later
it wasn’t some grand revelation that stopped him.
No choir.
No lightning.
No angel kicking in the door.
Just this:
his dog,
old and half blind,
came down the hallway
dragging his nails across the floor
just to find him.
That little sound.
That stupid, ordinary sound.
Scratch.
Scratch.
Scratch.
Like the world saying:
not yet.
I’m still here.
You still belong to something.
That’s how life saves you sometimes—
not with fireworks,
but with a leaking faucet,
a neighbor’s laugh through thin walls,
the smell of coffee from the apartment downstairs,
a text you forgot to answer,
a song on the radio
that catches your ribs by surprise.
Not because everything’s fixed.
Hell no.
Some wounds don’t close clean.
Some winters take up residence.
Some mornings feel like lifting railroad ties
with your bare hands.
But pain is a weather,
not a country.
You are not sentenced
to every storm you survive.
There are mornings out there
you haven’t met yet—
cheap sunlight on a kitchen floor,
someone saying your name
like they’re glad it still exists,
a joke so dumb
it breaks something open in your chest
and lets air back in.
There is soup in a chipped bowl.
There is rain on a tin roof.
There is the first honest sleep
after months of bargaining with ghosts.
There is still music left
with your fingerprints on it.
So if tonight
your mind is a boarded-up storefront
and hope feels like a town
you can’t afford to drive to—
don’t make forever
out of a night
that’s lying to you.
Call somebody.
Wake somebody.
Be inconvenient.
Be a problem.
Cry ugly.
Bang on doors.
Tell the truth
even if it comes out broken
and shaking
and mean.
Especially then.
Staying is the most outlaw thing
some of us will ever do.
Staying is dragging your busted heart
through one more dawn
out of pure stubborn grace.
Staying is spitting in the eye
of every voice
that ever told you
you were too much trouble to keep.
You are a whole unfinished song
the world would be poorer without.
And somewhere—
maybe closer than you think—
there’s still a porch light on.
Still a chair
leaning a little to the left,
saving your place.
- Still a Porch Light On - May 28, 2026
- Devenir - February 22, 2026
- Hollowed Howl - October 16, 2025
