We’re born with millions 
Of little lights shining in the dark 
And they show us the way.
One lights up, every time you feel love in your heart 
One dies when it moves away.

I was seven when Phil first told me about the lights. The little lights, he called them. We were in the park where we’d first met three years earlier; only for the first time ever our parents had let us come alone. I knew Phil’s mum was watching from the window and I was pretty sure Phil knew too but neither of us said anything. We headed straight for the tunnel and clambered into the sheltered darkness with a ‘whoop’ that echoed off the tin walls. It was small and narrow and smelt strongly of cheap metal and grass, but to us it was a fortress. Phil sat at one end: small enough to cross his legs but too tall to sit up straight so his neck was bent down, his back curved and his silent blue eyes in mine. I leant against the smooth metal hugging my knees to my chest and smiling. I used to smile a lot when I was little, I think that’s why Phil liked me.

Mostly I talked and he listened, but that was okay. I would go on for hours about my day and my adventures and my plans for the future and he wouldn’t say anything at all. And then sometimes he’d speak and I’d fall instantly silent and listen, because when he spoke magic poured from his lips.

“We’re full of lights.” He said, interrupting my theory as to how Mrs Jacobs had to be a witch, his words echoing around the tunnel.

“What d’you mean?” I asked.

“I think when we’re born we must have loads and loads because babies are sweet and lovely and stuff, but then the lights go out one by one as we get old. And that’s why grownups are sad all the time and walk around all frowny and hardly ever smile. But kids are always happy. And then teenagers are sometimes happy but sometimes their lights go out and they get really sad and shout and cry a lot. By the time you get to be a grownup most of your brightest lights have burned out so you go to work because you’re not light enough to have fun anymore so you work boringly and you make babies so that you can see their lights all bright and new which lights up a few more little ones to help you keep happy again for a while. And eventually all your lights burn out, and then you die. You might not actually die, but you’re completely pitch black dark inside so it’s the same thing really. That’s why some people never smile. Their lights have all gone out and they’re dead but their bodies are still going so they’re just walking around waiting for the bodies to catch up. And sometimes the lights go out all in a rush and the people get really sad because they still remember how bright they were but they can’t get them back and that’s when people kill themselves. They don’t want to be a dead person in a body.”

I just stared at him, my thumb in my mouth. Eventually, I nodded. He didn’t say anything and I didn’t either. We just sat together in a metal tube in the middle of a greying play park in a suburban town that was nothing remarkable; graffiti coated and peeling, metal squealing and swings rusting. But to me, that tunnel was made of solid silver shining in a park of gold and green.

~

We walked home from school together every day without fail, bags swinging at our sides and books under our arms. The next time I brought up the lights was on a day like this - mid-autumn at the beginning of year eight. I was talking, Phil was listening. I was telling him about Mr. Chambers committing suicide in the locker rooms right before the new year sevens had PE and how we’d heard the screams three corridors down.

“I think, I think his lights must have all gone out. You know. Because his wife cheated on him and their kid got taken into care and he was going to be fired for being sad all the time and forgetting stuff. Like, you know, how you said when we were little?” I was silent, waiting for him to speak.

“Yeah, I guess.” He said after a while. “But I don’t think they were all gone, he wasn’t dead yet. There was a little candle right deep inside but the blackness was so black he couldn’t see it and he thought he was dead so he went but he could have stayed. He could have put some petrol on the fire and made it burn bright again and washed away the black, but no one bought him any petrol, I guess. I think one lights up every time you feel love in your heart. There was enough light in him for a little love, I think. The lights show us the way that’s the thing – like a path you can follow. But when they move away too fast you can’t keep up and then they’re gone.”

“Why do they move away?” I asked. I’d stopped looking over my shoulder to make sure no one was listening now, too engrossed in the world he was describing.

“Well the lights are love, if the love goes so do they. If your girlfriend leaves you that makes you sad because she’s taken her light away – you didn’t feel sad before you met her even though her light wasn’t there because there was nothing gone. It’s like, I don’t know how to say it.” He ran his fingers through his floppy fringe. “In your room it’s light and you can see everything and to you everything is perfectly clear but then if you shine a spotlight it suddenly becomes even more clear. But then if you turn the light out only then will you think ‘hey I can’t see properly anymore’. When love leaves your heart, so does the light. Your love for things burns and then other people’s love for you also burns but love shared is the brightest because your love for them and their love for you join together to make one really big light and then the problem is only one of you has to stop loving for the light to go out.”

I just nodded. It made sense; no matter how weird the things Phil said were they always made sense if you listened carefully enough. It was these things that made him the only person I’d ever called my best friend. It didn’t matter that most of the time he was quiet. Some people said he was scary, how you could look up in lessons and just find him staring at you with those steady blue eyes. Some of the girls teased him and called him a weirdo and he’d always say sorry and try to make it up to them but that just made them laugh even harder. It used to make me so mad. I just wanted to explain to them, to make them understand and seem him for what he really was. He was just as human as we were only he was on this other world parallel to ours – almost the same but also so, so much better and more beautiful. Sometimes it would be a brief sentence that had no relevance to the conversation yet somehow made everyone smile. Sometimes it was just a word or a noise. But every time my ears would prick up, as if fine tuned to the specific timbre of his voice, and my body would turn by itself to listen.

It was Phil’s little lights that made me think for the first time about my own. And the more I thought, the more I was able to pinpoint the moments they went out. And to realise the ones that slowly burnt out all by themselves without me noticing.

One went out at a bus-stop in Edinburgh

One went out in an English park

~

It wasn’t until we were older that Phil refined his theory – the littlest, whitest lights were our innocence, so to speak. More the belief of love than the love itself.

He was fourteen and he’d just had his first kiss with Jessica Thomas behind the bike sheds. He’d whispered the story to me in the back of a maths class and I’d congratulated him with a hushed whoop and a pat on the back but he’d pushed me away. He told me that he’d felt a light go out somewhere deep inside and thought all day about what it could be but now he knew. It was the realisation that his only ever first kiss for the rest of his life was wet and sloppy and made him feel a little sick. And that there was no love and no magic and no sparkles and it made him think that love was just a thing in the stories that didn’t exist and it scared him. And then I got scared. I asked him why people said they were in love and he told me it was just a word they used to explain their fear of eternal loneliness that was bringing them together so that at least one of them wouldn’t have to die alone. And then Mr. Barnes had yelled at us and Phil had refused to say another word until we were back at my house.

We sat on my bed, just talking about stuff until my mum came in to bring us milk and tell us to go to bed even though we were really too old for it. It was a tradition, from the first ever sleepover where we’d watched finding nemo three times in a row to the Mario Kart marathons we were now accustomed to, we’d always had our milk before bed. It had gotten to the point where no one knew when to stop. When he slept over every other night, how did we decide exactly which night we ‘aged up’? So we drank our milk without a second’s thought and turned off the TV until she’d left the room.

“Maaario!” Phil sang as the screen lit back up, volume right down low. He crossed his eyes and tipped backwards onto the bed, controller still gripped firmly in his hands.

I threw a pillow at his head with a laugh.

“Luigi!!” I squeaked.

“Mario!” Phil growled as he crawled back upright.

“Luigi!”

“Mario!”

“Luigi!”

“Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaario!” Phil launched himself at me, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and tumbling us back into the pillows.

My mum banged angrily on the wall between our bedrooms and we tried to stifle our laughter.

Eventually my ribs stopped shaking and I clutched my stomach with a groan.

“Ow. Don’t make me laugh it hurts.”

“What, never again?”

“No. It’s clearly bad for you. To be avoided at all costs.”

“Oh really…” Phil said with a wicked grin.

I started backing up as quickly as possible but I was in a corner and had nowhere to go. Phil was on me in a second digging his fingers into my ribs. I squirmed and yelled, my thrashing limbs flying out and hitting the wall until we heard my mum clamber out of bed with a yell. Phil sprung away from me, still doubled over with laughter, and I struggled to regain my breath as he slipped down onto his camp-bed and pretended to sleep.

My mum burst through the door with a feral snarl.

“I have to be up for work at six thirty tomorrow morning, you boys wake me up again and you’re sleeping outside!” She slammed the door behind her and we exploded with muffled guffaws again.

Phil scrambled back onto the bed with me shoving a corner of my duvet into his mouth as if to plug the laughter.

“Ew!” I whispered, still sniggering.

He winked and spat it out into my face and I recoiled with a stifled snort. I grabbed his arm and pulled until we fell back together on the mattress, breathing heavily. As we started to calm down I stared up at the glow in the dark stars I’d stuck to the ceiling when I was seven. I was thinking about the little lights. When I was around Phil, I could feel them burning bright and lighting the whole room. It was like he said, they light up every time you feel love in your heart. And I did love Phil – he was my best friend and he made me happy and complete in a way no one else did. Blue eyed boy, I thought to myself, you’re special and I love you.

Of course I didn’t say any of this out loud. As a fourteen year old boy, telling another male that you love them is never going to go down well even though I knew Phil would understand. So instead I lay in silence with Phil’s warmth at my side. That’s the sign of a true friend, absolute comfort even in silence. When I walk places I tend to go off into my mind and not say anything for a long time, but with Phil that’s okay because he’s in his world too. We walk at the same pace, so fine tuned that we often find ourselves walking in step by accident. We can just walk for hours without saying a word but still enjoying the simple company and now we lay in silence, listening to each other’s breathing.

“Are you scared?” Phil spoke up suddenly.

“What of?” I asked, confused.

“Your first kiss. Now that I’ve told you how awful mine was.”

“I guess.” I admitted. “How bad was bad?”

“Pretty bad.” He said quietly. “I don’t think it’s our fault though, it’s all the books and the movies and the songs. It’s just not like that. And if it wasn’t for them maybe we wouldn’t be let down so badly. Maybe if no one ever told us about love we might actually be able to experience it. But my first kiss was rushed and rubbish and neither of us knew what we were doing and I don’t love her. I don’t even like her that much, we just did it because we were there and we were desperate I guess. Desperate to lose our kissing virginity so we didn’t have to ever say ‘I’ve never kissed anyone’ again. But now I think I wish I’d waited, not for someone I love because I think that’s actually a lot rarer than we think. But for someone who meant something to me so that it could have meant something too. So that I could have looked back on it and smiled, you know? At the memory of the kiss but mostly of the memory of the person. I’ll probably forget her name by the time I’m twenty.”

We stared in sombre silence at my ceiling for a while; I was trying to think of people I could kiss and coming up blank and I guess Phil was pondering in that beautiful brain of his.

“I think,” he said suddenly, “I’d have liked to have my first kiss with you instead.”

I blinked.

“Oh.” I said. “Are you… you know, gay, then?”

“No,” he said shaking his head, “at least I don’t think so. It’s just you’re my best friend – I actually do love you in the least homosexual way possible.” He he tilted his head to poke his tongue out at me. “You know what I mean. But I do. You mean a lot to me, and I think the kiss would have had feeling. That was the main thing about Jess, there were just no feelings. There weren’t any fireworks pr passion or goosebumps or anything; like my heart was beating really fast when she leaned in but then it just stopped when she started kissing me. Everything went really blank. All I was thinking about was trying to move my mouth like they do in the movies. And that’s why I was so scared, I thought there was something wrong with me. I thought that I didn’t have the ability to love or that I was actually gay but I spoke to Ryan because he’s kissed lots of girls and he said it was the same for everybody unless they’re properly in love, it’s just that no one ever speaks about it.”

My brow furrowed and I frowned.

“I want my first kiss to be good though.” I said, biting my lip. “There’s no one I properly love. I’m not really friends with any girls. If what you’re saying is the same for me then I think I’d rather have my first kiss with you too, like no homo.” I grinned.

“Do you want to?” he said, face serious. “I don’t mind if you do. I think I would in your situation, even though we’re not gay.”

“But, that would be so weird…” I said uncertainly. “Like we wouldn’t be able to ever look at each other again I swear.”

Phil shrugged. “Girls do it all the time. I think it’s only weird for guys because they have the whole ‘anti gay’ thing. But like, remember when Celeste and Kirsty told us in truth or dare that they practice kissing with each other to get better at it for when they get a boyfriend? And they said it wasn’t weird because they’re best friends and it’s even got to the point when their kisses are better than any with a guy and I reckon they’ve got a point. With something like kissing the best is gonna be with someone who knows what you like and knows you so well they can predict your movements so you don’t end up bumping heads or something. So like, I don’t really mind. I want to test my theory too, but I get that it’s your one and only first kiss and you don’t want to waste it and stuff. It’s just a suggestion. Because like, you’re my best friend and I want you to have a better first kiss than me.”

I considered for a moment.

“I guess it is kinda tragic that I’m fourteen and still haven’t ever kissed anyone. But I dunno Phil. I’m not gay so does it even count? Surely it’s no different from kissing my brother…”

He shrugged again. “Well, it’s a very different kind of kissing and at least you’d know what to expect when your first proper kiss does come along and you might be a bit better at it. Especially if she’s had a boyfriend before or something. But it’s up to you - I don’t mind because we’re not going to tell anyone but I’m not that fussed about kissing a guy either. I just want to see if it turns out any lights like Jess did, you know.”

I nodded slowly.

“Okay? I think…” I said after a moment.

“You sure? If it’s really awful I’m gonna feel so bad though.”

“Yeah. But we can’t ever tell anyone okay?” My heart was racing now. I was going to kiss someone. It didn’t really matter that it was Phil I just wanted to kiss someone and I guess he was right, if I was awful at kissing and I’d kissed someone like Jessica she’d probably tell the whole school. But Phil wouldn’t. He’d just help me. And I could stare at his eyes because they really were beautiful, even though they were boys’ eyes.

He shuffled a little closer and tried to lean forwards but we were sitting cross legged and he couldn’t reach properly. I giggled as we both shifted round to let our legs dangle off the edge of the bed, twisting our bodies back round to face each other.

“Just call me Philippa okay?” He grinned.

I grinned.

He leaned in.

I screwed my eyes shut and waited.

Even then I shuddered a little when our lips met. They weren’t nearly as wet as I’d imagined, and surprisingly warm and soft.

He pressed his lips to mine and then pulled away tentatively but I could feel the warmth of his mouth still close. I leant forwards this time to tell him it was okay, pressing out lips together again. This time he lingered on my mouth before gently opening his own. I mirrored his movements, it seemed easy really while I was just doing whatever he did. Responding, moving with him, still gently. Nothing like the passionate kisses in the movies. Soft and scared. I felt him lift his arm and then hesitate over my shoulder. My hand was awkwardly curled up on his waist, the other bunched into a fist on my lap. I just focused on keeping my eyes closed and concentrated on getting the kissing thing right. It wasn’t too bad but it wasn’t amazing either, it was a weird thing. I wondered who the first person to kiss someone was. People probably said ew a lot.

Phil’s hand brushed my face by accident and he jerked it away. Slowly and deliberately I moved my hand from my lap to the base of his neck and he relaxed, allowing his hand to rest on my shoulder.

Kissing Phil was easier than I’d thought it would be. I knew Phil. I knew what he was going to do and when he was going to do it, I could tell when he wanted to change the angle or slow down or speed up because I wanted the same things. Kissing Phil was okay, actually.

I was thinking about the lights while I was kissing him. I was thinking about the one that went out when he kissed Jessica and waiting for one to go out in me, but it didn’t feel like it would. It felt more like a light that was already there was burning more brightly. It wasn’t like fireworks or anything, just a comfortable warmth. Phil’s love for me was so close that our lights had merged and now they were lighting the whole room. But like, not in a weird way or a silly romantic way just in a happy way. It was just like Phil had said – I didn’t really feel anything while I was kissing him, but at the same time it didn’t feel disgusting or wrong. It felt okay. And a very, very little part of me was thinking hey, I could get used to this.

When Phil pulled away I smiled and he smiled too.

“How are your lights?” I asked.

“Pretty good, actually.” he said.

~

We didn’t speak about it ever, even though sometimes I felt like I wanted to. I never kissed Phil Lester again.

I kissed girls though. And sometimes it was wet and sloppy and sometimes there was so much tongue that I could hardly breathe and sometimes it was soft and sweet and gentle, almost like Phil. And instead of noting which base I got to like the other guys or trying to get my hands down their pants I watched for the lights.

Lights dimmed and flickered, some blazed up suddenly while others turned blue – if only for a second.

~

In year nine Phil Lester moved forms and I was left alone to make new friends. These lights were different, they were temperamental and flickering. They made me permanently paranoid and the tiniest wrong move could send one wavering dangerously. Their friendship was fickle. It relied solely on reputation and group politics and conformity so it wasn’t long before I went everywhere with them, just to make sure they didn’t abandon me. I never told them about the lights, but I still felt them.

One went out in a nightclub, when I was fifteen,

Little lights in my heart.

I did everything they did because if I didn’t then I would have nowhere to go. I barely ever saw Phil anymore, he had a girlfriend and he spent all his time with her and all of a sudden I wasn’t his closest friend anymore. Her light was new. It was so bright that it was blinding, and he couldn’t see my little lights anymore.

One went out when I lied to my mother;

Said the cigarettes she found were not mine.

One went out within me

Now I smoke like a chimney;

It’s getting dark in this heart of mine.

~

By the time I left secondary school I’d all but forgotten about Phil Lester. I remembered the little lights though, and I remembered the darkness when his moved away. I don’t know what college he went to. Probably the same one as Phoebe, his newest girlfriend. I couldn’t seem to keep a relationship, I couldn’t make myself feel the love everyone else seemed to be basking in. I used to think something was wrong with me – I just couldn’t make myself fall for people like that. No love in my heart, no new lights.

One went out in the back streets of Manchester

One went out in an airport in Spain

One went out, have no doubt

When I grew up and moved out

Of the place where the boy used to play.

I went to Manchester University to study law. I got another girlfriend in the first week but she’d dumped me by the third. She just ‘didn’t feel the connection’, but then neither did I.

One went out when uncle Ben got his tumour.

We used to fish and I fish no more.

Though we will not return,

I know one still burns

On a fishing boat of the New Jersey Shore.

I had my line perfected by now. I boasted to my friends that I could pull in any club in any city with my sweet words, and it was true. I picked my girl; always with blue eyes, and I told her.

We’re born with millions

Of little lights shining in the dark

And they show us the way

One lights up every time we feel love in our hearts

One dies when it moves away.

Only after a while they stopped congratulating me and watching on jealously. Because now they all had girlfriends, steady relationships this time. One got pregnant. Another got engaged. And I was still pulling in clubs and going to work every day with a hangover and a pang of regret.

Two lights went out in quick succession when my parents died. My mum went first, breast cancer; and my dad followed her within the month. They said he died of a broken heart. He just wasted away and stopped eating or drinking or moving but I know what happened. His last light was dead and so was he.

I used to think I’d never had a broken heart, how could I when I’d never been in love?

But in those last weeks I spent by my dad’s bedside he spoke to me. He told me about love and how it feels to be left behind and I realised then that I’d been heartbroken most of my life. Since that day in year nine when I’d waited for Phil after school and he’d walked right past me with the prettiest girl in the school.

We’re born with millions

Of little lights shining in our hearts

And they die along the way

Till we’re old and we’re cold

And we’re lying in the dark

‘Cause they’ll all burn out one day

I retired early. I knew I was running low on fuel, my life was cold and dark and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d smiled. I moved to the village of Potterton near where I’d grown up – close enough that I could still get the bus into town and visit the play park and the school and my old house; but far enough away that I was able to live a quiet life in the country by myself.

I read the papers every day. There isn’t much to do in a small house by yourself; so I read systematically cover to cover from the advertisements to the obituaries.

Maybe it was a bit morbid, reading the names of the dead. But I liked to imagine their lives – imagine the lights and the things that sparked them and then blew them out again before the end. I liked to think about the ones they still had light left in their hearts. I thought about how many lights they took down with them. Some dimmed many: their columns were full of simpering letters and memorials; candlelit vigils at seven and multiple remembrance services over the coming weeks.

Others just had a name and a date.

They were kinder. They weren’t leaving anyone behind, the only lights dying were their own.

I had my name on my medication bracelet. They’d be able to tell the date by the newspaper on my lap when they found me. Now I was just waiting, waiting patiently for that last light. I knew which one it was. It was small and white and it burned just behind my heart.

I took a drag from my cigarette, flicking the ash onto the porch. The arthritis in my fingers made even simple, everyday actions like this painful and I winced. With a grunt I heaved myself up out of the chair. My body had wasted through years of neglect; I had a potbelly now and my skin was gnarled and littered with varicose veins and darkened age spots. Movement was slow. I was due for a hip replacement, but I wasn’t sure I really wanted it anymore.

I walked with a cane, hunched over from years of bad posture. I remembered thinking I’d never get old; that I’d rather die than not be able to walk properly. How young I was. How bright.

My old bones creaked as I made it down the path and bent painfully with a crack to pick up the newspaper. The boys down here had gotten lazy, they no longer had the time it seemed to walk up the path and put it through the letterbox. I grumbled to myself as I turned around and shuffled back up the steps.

The obituaries were short today. Three names in quick succession. A brief summary, a woman who won an award for a painting once, a published author and a chemist. Little paragraphs: a cot death. A car crash. Cancer. Heart attack. Stroke. I turned the page and blinked. Here was a long column, only one letter but it was longer than usual. I settled down to read.

Philip Michael Lester. Aged 67. Natural causes.

I let out a long, slow breath.

Follows a letter of remembrance from his neighbour Gladys Parton.

I lived beside Philip for less than a year, which was still more than enough to mark him out as one of the most remarkable men I have ever met. He had worked for a small company most of his life but I can’t imagine he was happy there – his mind was too beautiful for mundane tasks. I knew absolutely nothing about him and yet I feel as if I could see into his mind. I certainly knew him better than anyone else I ever met; he didn’t seem to have any acquaintances and no family to mourn him which is why I am writing this letter. He is a man who deserves to be mourned.

The paper might tell you he died of natural causes but I don’t think that can be true. It was something he used to say to me; ‘Gladys dear, it’s getting dark in this heart of mine.’ Those words shook me to the core even though I didn’t have the faintest clue what they meant. I used to stare into his eyes and try to understand his mumblings, because I had the strange feeling that they held the key to the whole universe somehow. His eyes were the deepest blue. Mine have grown pale and watery with age, but his were still bright – at least until the last weeks.

I think the last light left his heart when he gave up looking. What was he looking for? I’ll never know, but I know it was a someone rather than a something. I asked him once and he confided in me that he had been single for 46 years and all I could do was ask myself: how? This was the purest, most beautiful soul I had ever to come across. But then I noticed a pattern: weekly bus trips into town. Train rides to Manchester once a month. He would leave in such high spirits, eyes alight – but when he came back they would be dead. Not three weeks ago I cornered him and told him to stop searching or at least let me search with him so he didn’t look so sad after his trips, but he told me I didn’t understand. He’d been searching for 46 long years, he knew it was fruitless but still he went because the last light left was the little white light of hope. ‘Just a glimpse’ he used to say, ‘all I ask is one last glimpse of the only person ever to light a flame in my heart. It’s too late Gladys dear, I know that. He will be married now with kids and grandkids and dogs and cats and God knows what else. But I want to see his lights again and the lights of his children. They were the most beautiful lights I ever saw, so soft and shy but always warm and smiling. So happy all the time. So friendly, no matter  how cruel the world. The lights went for a while and that hurt to watch, but I know he’ll have found his love and they’ll be back and they’ll be in his children too – bright and shining and new.’

That speech damn near broke my heart, and I’m a widower already but I feel like I’ve been widowed all over again. He was shining and beautiful but also sad and old just like the rest of us, yet more so.

Phil Lester never found who he was looking for. He died alone and in the dark.

I just hope the man he was searching for is as happy as he says, and that maybe he remembers strange old Phil with his swimming eyes and beautiful words somewhere in the back of his heart.

My last light went out without a sound.

We’re born with millions

Of little lights shining in our hearts

And they die along the way

Till we’re old and we’re cold

And we’re lying in the dark

‘Cause they’ll all burn out one day

They’ll all burn out one day.