They say the burglar was an elderly man, nearly blind. He stepped through an unlocked door of the neighbor’s house down the street, looking for his cat in the middle of the night or—he says he thought—maybe the sound of his wife’s name he hasn’t heard in over a decade. They say he claims he doesn’t remember this, but he left the house from the second floor, scrambling down vines on the wall, nimble and quiet. They say the night before that they pulled him out of the sea, actually some fishermen on boats did when he was caught flailing in their nets, an old man with wet white hair and determined limbs thrashing about in the water, mumbling something about a flashlight or fireflies or a lantern fish or a lighthouse, something sparkling and bright. Two of the guys took him home and stayed with him for a few hours just to be sure and he sat there shivering in a red and white striped towel looking like a beached candy cane, bentbacked on a chair with a hot cocoa, and they asked if he wanted to change out of his wet clothes but he didn’t answer and just kept looking right past them. Eventually he fell asleep just like that and the men went home and in their warm beds whispered the names of their wives until they fell asleep. They say he was empty-handed on the security camera after the break-in, but when I heard about all the news the next day I wondered if he found what I’d been looking for, the star I saw falling from my window—if he’d chased the light across the waves, into a stranger’s living room, skipping across the floor.
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