I first met red light therapy in a gym bathroom, where all great romances begin. Above the urinals was a poster of a man whose pores looked like polished apples. “ARE YOU TIRED OF BEING A SAD POTATO?” the poster asked. “BATHE IN PHOTOBIOMODULATION.” The model’s face glowed the specific shade of emergency escape signage. His smile said, “I don’t get sick anymore,” and also, “I definitely sell crypto.”

Below the poster was a QR code and a disclaimer half the size of a fruit fly’s conscience: Not intended to diagnose, prevent, treat, cure, or illuminate anything other than the knowledge that you could be doing more for your mitochondria.

It was persuasive. I ordered a red light panel that night, the size of a refrigerator door and marketed as “The Apollo Maxx 660/850: A Personal Sunshine Wall for People Who Fear the Sun.” It arrived in a box labeled “FURNITURE—BUT FOR YOUR CELLS.”

The instructions were simple: position the panel eighteen inches from your body, disrobe as legally appropriate, and bask, eyes gently closed, for 10–15 minutes per region. The manual diagram showed a hairless man beaming at a rectangle. There were arrows toward his cheekbones, his clavicles, and this is important, his groin, which the manual labeled, cheerfully, “the athletic complex.”

“Please tell me this is a lamp for tomatoes,” my wife said.

“It does support vegetation,” I said. “Specifically, me.”

We negotiated a schedule. I was allowed to glow weekday mornings, provided I didn’t turn our bedroom into a haunted submarine. I set the panel on a stand and installed the companion app, which tracked my “joules,” “dosage,” and “smugness.” When I powered it up, the room flooded with emergency Mars. The cat, Mr. Pickles, bolted. My succulents leaned toward me like worshipers.

The app pinged: Congratulations! You just energized your cytochrome c oxidase. Share to LightBook?

I did. Within minutes, an acquaintance from high school messaged: “Bro, did you just activate your nitric oxide?” He added a winky face and a link to his affiliate code.

***

Being bathed in laser-adjacent daybreak changes you. The first week, I became annoying in new and specific ways. “Honey,” I said at breakfast, “I think my mitochondria are doing parkour.”

“Is that why you crisped the entire left flank of your body?” she asked, handing me aloe. “You look like a stop sign learned shame.”

I didn’t burn. I was energized. Did I begin wearing a robe? Yes. Did I announce, unprompted, that I could feel my collagen knitting itself like an industrious grandmother? Also yes. Did I attend Pilates with my panel strapped into the passenger seat like a beloved child?

“Is that a grow light?” asked Janet from class, whose hamstrings are made of piano wire and opinions.

“It’s a wellness device,” I said. “Think of it as a Starbucks for cells.”

She peered into the shining grid. “Is there a setting for koi? Because Kevin, mine, not the fish, thinks our pond is seasonal depression.”

By week two, people were asking me to bring the light to things. “We’re doing a vision board party,” said our neighbor Trish, who sells essential oils with the zeal of a small nation. “Could you red-light our intentions?”

“Absolutely,” I said, unfolding the Apollo Maxx at her kitchen island like a paramedic in a house made entirely of pumpkins. The mood board photos took on the glow of a Soviet parade. A woman manifesting “ABUNDANCE” burst into tears. “My father was a lighthouse keeper,” she sobbed. “This feels ancestral.”

From there it escalated. Doug, my barber-slash-chiropractor, asked if I’d do his elbows. The local pick-up pickleball group invited me to “pre-warm” the courts. Janet texted, “Bring your light to my book club, the book is bleak.” The bartender at Bark & Bourbon wondered if it could make his terrarium moss sexier. By the end of the month, I was running an informal photo-bio-mod carpool.

The Homeowners Association noticed.

I returned from one particularly invigorating glow to find a laminated letter on my door. “Dear Resident,” it began in a font that knows your Social Security number, “several neighbors have expressed concern regarding your ‘red window.’ The community signage policy prohibits illumination that suggests a house of ill repute, a submarine in distress, or the opening of a portal.”

I wrote back: “Dear Derek (HOA President), I am not operating a brothel or a portal. I am operating my mitochondria.” I printed the letter on cream bond paper and spritzed it with serenity. Two days later, I was required to attend an emergency meeting.

The HOA gathered in the clubhouse under a chandelier the size of a lunar module. Derek cleared his throat into an expensive shirt. “We’ve consulted the bylaws,” he said, “and while there is no specific clause about light therapy, there is a clause about vibes.” He read aloud. “‘All vibes must be neutral to pleasant.’ Your glow violates the vibe standard.”

“It’s medical,” I said, placing the Apollo Maxx on the table like an exhibit. “Do any of you get brain fog? Skin like a day-old pancake? Knees that sound like a Jenga tower falling?”

Half the room raised a hand.

“Behold,” I said, and turned the panel on. The chandelier blushed. Derek’s Rolex reflected apocalypse. The HOA collectively leaned toward the warmth like a group of iguanas deciding to buy a timeshare.

“You have three minutes,” Derek said, but he said it while walking closer, palms open, the way you approach a mysterious campfire that also sells MLMs. When I shut it off, they blinked as if waking from a pleasant cult. Derek adjusted his tie. “The Board,” he said slowly, “will be revisiting vibe policy.”

***

I wish that had been the end. But I felt emboldened, a dangerous setting for a man who owns a robe. My panel and I got louder. I pulled the curtains all the way back like a Renaissance merchant revealing bolts of velvet. I glowed at sunrise. I glowed at lunch. During a cold snap, I glowed my sourdough starter and it produced a loaf with the confidence of a TED Talk. Mr. Pickles began sleeping on the warm mat in front of the panel like a panther who reads Wellness Quarterly.

I became a Light Ambassador, which meant I paid $39 a month to be allowed to say “Light Ambassador” and occasionally post things like “Remember: 660nm for surface-level tissue, 850nm for deep, like if your soul has hamstrings.” I spoke at a boutique gym’s “Winter Optimization Night,” taking the stage after a man who sells ice baths named Blade. I quoted a study I think was about mice. I used the phrase “turn your biology into a bistro.” People took notes in expensive notebooks with foxes on them.

Then came the misunderstanding with the city.

Apparently, when one neighbor tells another neighbor you have “red light therapy in your front room,” and that neighbor is a precinct captain, and that precinct captain hears “red light district therapy,” a certain type of municipal interest arrives at your home with a clipboard. Officer Hammersmith (real name) peered at the glowing wall. “We got complaints,” he said, “about licensed and unlicensed activities.”

“I’m helping my mitochondria pick up a side hustle,” I said.

He squinted. “Are you doing science?”

“A kind,” I said. “The app has graphs.” I showed him my weekly joule count. It resembled an EKG of an overexcited ferret. He nodded, impressed in spite of himself. “My knees,” he admitted, “sound like Halloween.”

“If you stand right here,” I said, “you’ll feel like a basil plant who knows a secret.”

He stood. He felt. He left with a pamphlet.

***

Every movement breeds its underground. A month later, city council proposed Ordinance 12.4.1: “No residence shall operate as a lighthouse.” It listed wattage limits and something called “ambient aura creep.” The room split into factions: Team Glow (spry retirees, yoga moms, Doug) vs. Team Night (birders, stargazers, a man named Bert who brought a stack of papers printed from a website called NightSkyFreedom.biz).

I took the podium, robe swapped for a conservative cardigan.

“Councilmembers,” I began, “I have been accused of creating a maritime hazard in a landlocked suburb. I am not a ship beacon. I am a skin beacon. If the worry is that our town will look like a premium aquarium, I propose a compromise: blackout curtains after 9 p.m., with a ‘grandmother exemption’ for anyone whose joints predict the weather.”

“Objection,” said Bert. “Grandmothers can be weaponized.”

A woman clutching a golden doodle stood. “The red makes my dog nostalgic,” she cried. “He won’t go to sleep without the glow. He remembers being born.”

Derek from the HOA rose, a new man. “The vibe,” he said solemnly, “is improved.”

Council tabled the ordinance. The red light community rejoiced by selling each other more lights. Blaze (formerly Blade) launched The Glow Underground, a speakeasy where people sat on yoga balls in a basement and paid $40 to bask. “Remember,” he murmured as he adjusted a panel. “This is not medical advice. This is ancestral electricity.”

I went, of course. “How often do you come?” I asked the woman next to me.

“Twice a week,” she said. “More if Mercury is cardio retrograde.”

“It’s just retrograde,” I said.

She smiled sadly. “For some of us, it’s cardio.”

***

Sometime in spring, my wife staged what she called a “brownout.” She unplugged the Apollo Maxx. The room returned to its original color: tan. “I’m calling time,” she said. “Your robe has a pocket for a thermometer. The cat no longer blinks. Last week you told a cashier at Whole Foods she had ‘youthful ATP.'”

“I was being supportive,” I said.

“You told my mother her forehead was a ‘before.'”

“I’m… recalibrating social dosage.”

She waved at the unplugged tower. “You’re glowing at dinner. You’re glowing at funerals. You’re glowing at the DMV.”

“That was community service,” I said. “The line moved faster. Two people decided to forgive their fathers.”

She sighed. “You’re chasing something that claims to be everything. It’s a lamp, not a personality. Put it away for a week.”

Reader, I did not take this well. I sulked in rooms. I counted my steps like a coal miner of feelings. In the absence of artificial dawn, my face became the face of a man reconsidering everything, like, for example, tomatoes.

But here is a secret: without the glow, I noticed it was spring. Actual spring. A smug white fist of blossom outside the window. I walked outside into the enormous, free blue and, with all due respect to cytochrome c oxidase, felt something you cannot track on an app. A neighbor waved. A child fell off a scooter. The sun, that colossal unbranded lamp, did its thing.

That afternoon, a package arrived, addressed to me in a font that had abs. It was from the red light company. Inside: “The Apollo Bidet 660,” a device for “photobiomodulating the athletic complex.” There was a note: Because you’re a valued Light Ambassador, we’re gifting you early access to our Infrared Wellness Throne. Transform bathroom time into better-you time.

My wife looked at the box and then at me. “No,” she said. “Absolutely not. We are not installing a Star Trek toilet.”

I lifted the bidet from its foam cradle. It hummed with quiet purpose, like a small jet preparing to do an ethical thing. “Knees,” I said weakly, as though I could bribe her with anatomy.

“No,” she repeated. “Go sit in the yard like a pioneer and get the kind of light that comes with birds.”

I took the bidet to the garage and sat on it in silence, uninstalled, like a man sampling a future he could not afford. Mr. Pickles jumped into my lap and purred, as if to say, We do not need to glow to be loved. Also, feed me.

***

I wish I could tell you I did a full detox and rejoined society as a person who experiences sunlight and keeps his robe for Halloween. I went three whole days without the panel. My skin didn’t fall off. My mitochondria did not unionize.

And yet.

On the fourth day, around dawn, I found myself standing in front of the unplugged Apollo Maxx like a pilgrim before a secular relic. The robe was already on me. “Just a quick glow,” I whispered, as if the lamp were a slot machine or an ex. I plugged it in.

The room bloomed red. My face warmed. Something deep in my body sighed like a radiator remembering warmth. I imagined, unscientifically and with great sincerity, the little workers inside me pulling on their tiny hard hats, clocking in. Hello, friends. Welcome back to the bistro.

I kept it to ten minutes. I closed the curtains. I texted Blaze that I was stepping back from the Underground, “into a relationship with moderation.” He sent a heart, the red kind, obviously. I kissed my wife on her non-glowing forehead and said, “Let’s go walk where there are birds.”

On our way out, Derek waved from his driveway. His face was the tranquil crimson of a man who has embraced his mitochondria and his boundaries. “Vibe policy updated,” he called. “We now recognize certain therapeutic glows between 7 and 9 a.m., with holiday exceptions.”

“Which holidays?” I asked.

“All of them,” he said. “But especially eclipse day.”

We walked. The sun rose, unsubtle and free, and I did not feel like a sad potato at all. I felt like a person with a lamp, which is almost the same thing, except one of them occasionally writes an affiliate link under a humor essay and the other one is my wife, invading my Amazon cart with bird feeders.

Later, at Pilates, Janet nodded toward the dark rectangle visible in my car. “Back at it?”

“Strategically,” I said.

She considered. “Can you do koi at 3? Kevin’s been lethargic since the city council livestream.”

“Sure,” I said. “But I’m instituting a two-fish minimum.”

That night I sat on the porch, listening to actual crickets instead of a podcast about mitochondrial confetti. The bidet box gleamed faintly in the garage like a promise or a threat. My phone buzzed with a notification from the app: We miss your glow! Reengage your joules.

I set the phone down.

A moth flapped into the porch light, chaotic and certain. Somewhere down the block, someone opened a sliding door and an unmistakable red washed briefly over the fence, soft as a blush. I gave a small, hypocritical salute and went inside, where my wife was reading a book that made no promises to her cells at all and still made her happy.

“Goodnight, Lighthouse,” she said without looking up.

“It’s a modest lamp,” I said.

“Goodnight, modest lamp,” she said, and turned off the real one. The room went pleasantly, charmingly dark.

————

Trae Stewart is a professor, author, and psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner. His poetry and short stories have appeared in Switchgrass Review, Hive Avenue Literary Journal, San Antonio Review, Medicine and Meaning, and Rappahannock Review, among others.