After the Blackout

When the city went dark,

we found each by sound -

a kettle dropped, a laugh cracked open,

a prayer caught mid-word.

-

Someone brought out a lantern.

Its glass was bruised with soot,

its handle burned the hand that held it.

Still, it glowed.

The light trembled across brick and skin,

revealing what the day had forgotten -

we were not alone.

-

We gathered in its orbit,

a small constellation of faces

unmasked by the sudden mercy of dark.

The man with the trumpet from down the hall

played something slow and aching,

and no one asked him to stop.

Someone passed bread.

Someone cried.

Someone laughed at how long

we'd lived beside each other

without ever saying good night.

-

The lantern flickered,

and we leaned closer,

guarding it with out breath.

Stories spill out -

the names of lost pets,

the lovers who never came back,

the streets that used to bloom with lilacs.

All of it rising and falling like tide.

-

When the power returned,

the hum came first -

the world remember how to forget.

Windows glared awake,

and we slipped back behind our doors,

smelling of wax and relief,

of something like grace.

-

But in the morning,

on that same stoop,

the lantern was still burning -

smaller now, steady,

waiting for someone to notice

how warm the light had become.