The Porch Light That Refused to Go Out

Even after she left, the light never dimmed. Some said it was broken. I knew better.

The porch light at 218 Waverly Street had been glowing for six years straight.

It outlasted three landlords, two hurricanes, and one particularly vengeful raccoon. Neighbors made jokes, theories, and even bets about it. Kids dared each other to run up and touch it at midnight, convinced it held ghost energy or alien residue.

But I knew the truth.

I had turned it on the night Mae left. And I had never dared turn it off.

She had stood on the porch with a duffel bag slung over her shoulder, her knuckles white against the handle.

“You’ll be okay?” she asked, her voice low.

“Of course,” I lied.

The sky had been bloated with summer rainclouds. That strange green light that comes before a storm had washed everything in a surreal hue. But Mae had looked so real in that moment—messy braid, chipped nail polish, the freckle just above her left eyebrow—that I almost said it.

“Stay.”

I didn’t. She needed to go. Art school in California. A chance. A life.

So I kissed her on the cheek, flicked on the porch light behind her, and watched her taxi disappear into the blur of wet streets and headlights.

That was the last time I saw her.

Time moved in strange spirals after that. I kept the house, paid rent religiously, lived among her leftover coffee mugs and thrift store records. My days bled together—commutes, grocery trips, and online classes I barely remembered taking. But every night, before bed, I looked out the window to make sure the porch light was still on.

And it always was.

No bulb change. No wiring issues. Just this steady, unwavering amber glow. It became something more than habit—more than superstition.

It became her.

After a year, I got letters. Not from Mae—but about her.

“Unreachable.”

“Dropped out.”

“No forwarding address.”

She had vanished—like fog burning off a lake.

I asked her friends. No one had seen her. I even called her old professor, a gentle woman with watercolor-stained fingers, who only sighed and said, “Some people run not from a place, but from being known.”

The porch light stayed lit.

Even when I tried to unscrew it one night during a blackout—hands trembling with grief and defiance—it wouldn’t budge. The bulb was cold. Unplugged, even. Still, it glowed.

So I left it alone.

And life, as it does, moved on.

People started noticing. A journalist knocked on my door once, notebook in hand, eyes wide with wonder.

“Are you aware your porch light has been on for over 2,000 days straight?”

“Yes,” I said, closing the door.

Another woman, a stranger, left a letter in my mailbox. It was folded inside a pressed lily.

“My brother died last spring. Every night, I walk past your house, and your light makes me feel like something is still waiting to be found. Thank you.”

I cried for an hour after reading it.

One summer, a boy went missing down the block. Search teams canvassed every yard, every alley. They even searched mine.

That night, the boy was found asleep on my porch swing—safe, unhurt, cradled beneath the golden hue of the porch light. His mother sobbed when she carried him home.

Then came the night I met Evelyn.

She had moved into the neighborhood recently. We bumped into each other at the library, then again at the market, and again—strangely, comfortingly—on my street.

She asked about the light. I told her the truth.

“Someone I loved left,” I said, “and I promised myself I’d keep the light on for her. Just in case.”

Evelyn didn’t laugh. Didn’t scoff. She touched the railing of my porch like it held history.

“I think she still knows,” she said.

We fell into something quiet and kind. Shared coffees. Walks. A slow unraveling of the loneliness I’d knitted around myself. But I never turned off the light.

Even when Evelyn gently asked, “Do you think she’s ever coming back?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I want her to know the door was never closed.”

The light began to flicker on a Tuesday in October.

At first, I thought it was finally giving out. I braced myself, already mourning. But the light didn’t dim. It pulsed.

Like a heartbeat.

I stepped outside and stood beneath it, the same way Mae had all those years ago.

A wind picked up. Crisp, full of dead leaves and something else—something wild and sweet.

Then I saw her.

At the end of the street. Just a silhouette at first.

But I knew.

Mae.

Older. Thinner. Worn like a favorite book. But still her.

She walked slowly, eyes never leaving mine. She stopped at the bottom step.

“I didn’t think you’d still be here,” she whispered.

“I wasn’t sure you ever would be.”

She looked up at the light. It flickered once, then steadied.

“You kept it on.”

“I told myself I would.”

She laughed softly, and I heard a crack in it, like something breaking open.

“I’m not the same person,” she said. “I’ve seen some dark places.”

“So have I.”

She looked at me like she was trying to remember who she had been, and who I had become.

“Can I come in?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

I turned, opened the door, and she stepped over the threshold.

Behind us, for the first time in six years, the porch light went out.